


I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

by CloudAtlas



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, American Sign Language, Bisexual Female Character, Canon Deaf Character, Canon Lesbian Character, Culver University, F/F, F/M, Family of Choice, Friendship, Incarcerated Siblings, Money Troubles, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Past Child Abuse, Self Esteem Issues, Sexual Content, Women Being Awesome, bad language, study abroad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-13 05:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 92,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5696710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Life and Times of Clint Barton: Medical Student</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Initially written for the **be_compromised** [Valentine’s Day Mini-Promptathon 2014](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/372215.html?thread=7121143#t7121143) for the prompt: _University/college AU_. AND THEN IT BECAME A MONSTER. Title from the Bright Eyes album of the same name. Thank you to **geckoholic** for being the world's most epic cheerleader, **inkvoices** for her mad beta skillz, **AlphaFlyer** for early encouragement and all those on **little_details** for random information on things as diverse as Russian translation and the US passport application process.
> 
> Tags to be added. Yes, this will get finished. No, I don't know when.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint forgets his keys and things escalate from there.

“And you’re taking Russian why?” Clint asks, frowning over a slice of pizza Kate ordered because today is her ‘cooking day’ and Kate can’t cook for shit.

“There’s a really cute boy in my class.”

“That’s not a reason, Kate,” he replies, rolling his eyes. “And also, _you have a girlfriend_.”

“Yeah, so?” Kate raises an eyebrow like that’s a stupid reason. “I also have eyes, as does Em. Em’s cool with it and it’s not like anything will come of it. As you say, I have a girlfriend.” Kate fixes Clint with a slightly imploring look. “But he’s _really attractive_ , Clint. Plus it’s interesting and I want another language.”

“Fine, fine.” Clint sighs before brightening with an exaggerated look of eagerness. “Though hey, if you pick him over Em, will you put in a good word for me?”

“With Em? As in, _America Chavez?_ ” Kate looks sceptical; sceptical but also amused. “She already knows you’re a hopeless case, Clint. You’ve got no chance. Also: no vagina.”

“Damn,” he says, fake disappointment evident in his tone, “knew I was missing something.”

Seeing as Kate and Clint have known each other since they were kids Clint should really be used to Kate’s rather interesting way of going about life, but apparently nearly twenty years isn’t actually long enough to account for all peculiarities. And an attractive guy is a much more plausible reason – current girlfriend notwithstanding – than ‘you’re clearly going to be my partner when the zombie apocalypse comes and therefore I need you to be better prepared’ which is why Clint took up archery.

Well, sort of.

 

“Fucking shit.” Clint digs around in his bag fruitlessly, hoping his keys will suddenly appear, despite all evidence to the contrary. “ _Shit_.”

He pounds on the door instead. “Hey! Katie-Kate! Let me in!”

No answer.

“KATE!” Clint bellows. “Let me in!”

“Shut up douchebag, some people are trying to sleep!” comes the reply from the apartment over. Clint cringes. Oops, Night Nurse Aimee – but where the hell is Kate?

And then he remembers Russian and her sudden need for another language.

Clint swears under his breath, hoping for some kind of divine intervention that means he won’t have to walk all the way back to the fucking Ross Hansen Building to get keys off Kate. However, to the surprise of absolutely no one, nothing happens. So Clint shoves his book bag behind the dying bush outside their front door and, hoping they won’t get stolen but not caring enough to bring them with him, he heads towards the campus again.

Clint isn’t sure why Kate’s Russian class is in the Ross Hansen Building, as it’s primarily for the Sciences and filled with labs he knows intimately from his time in the biology labs in second year, but Clint is directed by the woman on the front desk – after a bit of gentle flirting where he learns her name (Helen) and the fact that she’s working the info desk to help fund her PhD in medical microbiology, because Clint is a sucker for a pretty face – to a classroom on the eighth floor overlooking the river.

He knocks on the door out of politeness, but then opens it anyway – because he isn’t that polite really – only to be confronted with the most goddamn beautiful woman Clint has ever seen in his life, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

“да?”

“Um… I need to speak with Kate Bishop really quickly?” Clint manages to say.

“Спрашивайте по-руски,” comes the reply from the woman, who is standing at the front of the class and therefore must be the Russian _tutor_ and Kate is so dead for not telling him about her. _Goddamn_.

“Um..?” Clint stammers.

“She said no questions in English, Barton.” Kate’s voice seems to come to Clint from very far away.

“I don’t…” he starts, because Clint’s grasp of Russian is about as good as his grasp of walking on air. But then he registers what the tutor had actually said and smirks slightly, before signing _I need to talk to Kate Bishop really quickly_ in ASL.

Kate’s ridiculously gorgeous Russian tutor looks mildly impressed, before saying “I’m assuming the question is the same. Go ahead,” and gesturing towards where Kate is sitting, next to someone Clint assumes is the ‘really attractive’ guy.

Clint’s gaze lingers on the tutor for a moment longer before he turns to Kate and says, “Keys.”

Kate rolls her eyes. “Did you lock yourself out of the apartment _again_ , Barton?” she says while rummaging in her bag.

Clint fakes affront. “Of course not, Katie-Kate,” he says, sarcasm evident. “I just fancied walking around campus for hours after a full day of clinic when I was already dead tired because _someone_ decided playing Mario Kart on full blast ‘til three in the morning was a good idea.”

Kate rolls her eyes, but looks at least mildly apologetic, before throwing her keys – Hello Kitty key ring and all – at Clint’s face. He deftly catches them out of the air with minimal effort and Kate sticks her tongue out at him.

“Careful, Katie-Kate,” Clint says. “The wind might change and you’ll be stuck like that.”

Clint pockets the keys and throws a cheeky salute in the direction of the really hot tutor before leaving the room.

“Oh, by the way.” He sticks his head back around the doorframe and grins at the tutor. “Clint Barton, pleased to meet you.”

The _thunk_ of Kate dropping her head onto the desk follows Clint back down the stairs, but he could also swear he hears the tutor laugh.

 

It only takes ten minutes after leaving the classroom for Clint to utterly regret… oh, everything about the exchange with the _goddamn gorgeous_ Russian tutor. Clint knows he’s generally crap at suave and charming and everything, but sometimes, sometimes he forgets and then embarrassing things like this happen.

Well, he’ll probably never see her again right?

But fuck, she was hot.

 

Clint and Kate are in their front room, eating take out and watching The Daily Show. Or at least Kate is watching The Daily Show. Clint is… complaining.

“You didn’t think to _mention_ her? You’re bi and dating _America Chavez_ and told me about the cute guy in your class, who you knew I’d have no interest in, but failed to mention your _smokin’ hot tutor_ , who you had to know I _would?_ You suck, Bishop. So hard.”

“Oh shut up, you big baby,” Kate says, patting him patronisingly on the head. “She’s way out of your league anyway. Also I wasn’t mentioning her to you so I could letch over her in private, without your added commentary.”

Clint thinks about this for a moment before saying, “You have the best taste in women, Katie.”

“And men,” Kate says patiently. “That’s why I’ve never dated you.”

“Hey!” Clint says indignantly. “That was uncalled for.”

Jon Stewart says something cutting about lawyers on the TV and Kate laughs. She then turns to Clint as the show goes to commercials. “She asked where you learned ASL actually.”

Clint looks at Kate warily. “And what did you say?” he says, words made indistinct by lo mein. Clint doesn’t really like talking about his hearing, or anything related to it to be honest, and his hearing aids are the most discrete he can possibly get for that exact reason. But stunningly attractive women tend to make him forget such things.

Kate arches her eyebrow. “That she should ask you, of course.”

“Katie!” Clint cries, voice still muffled by food. “You did not!”

“Yes I did, so now you can go and be incompetent at her and not me. Not that she deserves that. But hey, she asked. You must have made some kind of good impression. Maybe you have a chance.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Yeah right, I have more of a chance with the RH Receptionist.”

Kate laughs. “You mean Helen? Yeah, right. You sure know how to pick them. She’s _way_ out of your league. You’re sort of useless with women.”

Clint groans and tips his head back against the couch. “Why am I friends with you again?”

“Because I’m awesome,” Kate replies, distracted again now that The Daily Show is back on. “Also, some girls like your incompetence for some unfathomable reason. Jess, for example.”

“Yeah, and see how well that turned out,” mutters Clint.

He and Jess had ended spectacularly badly, full of misunderstandings and miscommunication and Clint sleeping with someone else when he thought they’d broken up though apparently they hadn’t. He had been kind of a dick really, though it had been partly her fault too. Not that that makes him feel much better about it.

Kate turns from The Daily Show to fix him with a sympathetic gaze. “You were nineteen. Everyone’s stupid at nineteen.”

Clint raises an eyebrow to hide how grateful he is to hear her say that. “You were nineteen only last year.”

Kate raises an eyebrow back and Clint suddenly remembers Jack. Ah. Fair point.

They are silent then, watching Jon Stewart poke fun at some celebrity that Clint doesn’t recognise but it’s funny anyway. When the show goes to commercials again Kate starts collecting together the take out cartons.

“Anyway, you’re marginally better now,” Kate says. Clint sticks his tongue out at her for that, which she blithely ignores. “I have faith in you. Go win the heart of the scary Russian.”

“She’s scary?”

“Yeah,” Kate replies, moving into the kitchen. “Scary beautiful.”

Clint thinks for a moment, then shrugs.

“Touché.”

 

“By the by, Barton,” Kate says later, as she gets up to go to bed, “her name is Natasha.”

Kate’s almost at the door when she turns back to smirk at him.

“Or Ms Romanov, if you like that sort of thing. Which you do!” she calls as she leaves the room. “I know you, Barton!”

Clint doesn’t choke on his last mouthful of Coke, but it’s a close thing.

 

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately knowing him, Clint can’t really do anything about Ms Natasha Romanov, AKA Kate’s goddamn gorgeous Russian tutor, as midterms come crashing down around his ears and he spends any time he isn’t sleeping, or in the library, in The Bean Tree – the little café two blocks down from his apartment, trying to remember the basics for diagnosing stomach problems and when it’s appropriate to use an endoscope.

Every now and again Kate mentions that her tutor is asking after him, but Kate is also a cruel and unusual person so he doesn’t believe her.

That is, of course, until Clint pulls himself out of a manic studying binge at five in the afternoon, two weeks after locking himself out of his apartment, to find his coffee has gone cold and Ms Natasha Romanov is standing over him smiling slightly.

“Wha – ?”

“Hi,” Natasha says, looking completely at ease. “Kate said you’d be here. Can I sit down?”

“Um…”

“Thanks,” she replies, sitting down and frowning at the table before moving some of his textbooks to create space for her tea and cake.

“You’re a hard man to catch hold of,” she says once she’s rearranged his books to her satisfaction.

Clint doesn’t really know what to say to that as he’s too busy freaking out because 1) she _actually came looking for him_ and 2) her t-shirt is tight and very flattering and has something on it he can’t quite work out because well, _boobs_ – and it’s really not polite to stare at them.

“Um, sorry?” he manages eventually, half running though the emergency procedure for heart failure. Not that he can save himself if something were to happen. Jesus Christ.

Ms Natasha Romanov smiles at him. “Not to worry,” she says, and then proceeds to eat her cake in a way that Clint is sure isn’t _meant_ to be pornographic, but is having that effect anyway.

After a moment of staring at her in confusion Clint tentatively asks, “Is there a reason you came looking for me?”

Ms Natasha Romanov smiles disarmingly and Clint gets the distinct impression the she is absolutely _loving_ how uncomfortable she’s making him feel. Why does he insist on becoming friends with and/or falling for women who insist on fucking with him? It’s like an illness.

“Yes, in fact there is,” she says brightly. “I want you to teach me ASL.”

The entirety of this sentence is momentarily lost on Clint, then…

“ _What?_ ”

“I want you to teach me ASL,” she repeats.

Clint looks around at all the stuff piled up on the table; at the books, empty coffee cups, discarded highlighters and stacks of paper covered in his incomprehensible scrawl. “What, now?” he says. Then, “Wait, why?”

Ms Natasha Romanov rolls her eyes. “No, of course not _now_. You seem hell bent on burying yourself in paper right now – but later, when you have time. And because I’m interested in languages and linguistics.”

“Hence the Russian.”

“Yes,” she replies. “Hence the Russian. Also, I am Russian.”

Clint nods. That makes sense.

“Also the French,” she says.

“Because… you’re also French?” Clint says stupidly.

“No,” she says pityingly. “Because I like French. And also Spanish and Portuguese. And Catalan. And I’m learning Arabic this year too.”

Clint feels more alarmed with each language she names; the kind of alarmed you feel when you’re faced with someone who is clearly _magnitudes_ more intelligent than you, and you’re trying not to fail a medical degree.

“And Croatian,” she continues.

A pause and then: “And Latin,” she adds as an afterthought.

“ _Latin?_ ” Clint repeats faintly. “Are you sure you don’t have enough languages already?”

“No,” she says decidedly, “I’m pretty sure I’d like to learn ASL from you too. You look like you’re good with your hands.”

She smirks at his dumbfounded expression and collects her cup and plate, disposing of them at the counter before walking out the door.

“Oh and by the way, Clint Barton,” she says, sticking her head back around the café door, heedless of the many heads that have now turned in her direction. “Natasha Romanov, pleased to meet you.”

Clint can’t do anything more than watch her retreating – and very attractive – behind as she rounds the corner onto Park Avenue. He then thunks his head down on his open notes, only to come back up with a small Post-it note stuck to his forehead.

_(276) 822-2832_

_If you don’t call within three days I’ll get your number off Kate. Don’t think I won’t._

_NR_

_PS: my t-shirt was ‘Exit, pursued by a bear’ from The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare. I saw you looking._

Holy crap.

 

He must still look shell-shocked when he comes back to the apartment an hour later, because Kate looks up from where she’s practically lying on top of America while watching _Up_ and simply says, “So she found you then?”

Clint makes a strangled sound before saying faintly, “She wants me to teach her ASL because, and I quote, she thinks I look as if I would be ‘good with my hands’.”

There’s a rather pregnant pause before Kate and America start laughing so hard Kate slips off the couch.

“Shut up,” Clint says mulishly when they don’t stop.

“Oh chico,” America says, fighting to stop laughing and getting up off the couch to shake Clint gently by the shoulders. “She’s fucked you up, man. You’ve only just met her and she’s fucked you up.”

“Have you seen her, Em?” demands Clint. “Have you? Because if you had, you wouldn’t let Kate within ten feet of her. She’s surface of the sun hot. She’s even hotter than you.”

There’s another beat of silence where Clint has just enough time to register what he’s said before Kate and America descend back into helpless, shaking laughter.

“Fuck you all, I’m going upstairs to freak out without your laugh track for accompaniment,” he grouses. “And then I’m going to fail my exams.”

Clint groans suddenly.

“Oh God, I’m going to fail these so bad,” he says as he leaves the room.

“Clint!” Kate calls after him and Clint seriously debates ignoring her, but they’ve been best friends for longer than he can remember and he just can’t. He sticks his head back ‘round the door.

America is sat back on the couch with Kate in her lap. They’re both wiping tears from their eyes, but for all their mirth, Kate looks serious.

“You’re not going to fail, Clint. You got this. And hey, she _likes_ you apparently. You’ll be fine.”

Kate Bishop: making Clint feel better since… what year was it when he was six? Christ.

 

Because Clint is, contrary to popular belief, an adult he does call Natasha. Three days later.

He explains, while trying to ignore Natasha’s unconsciously sexy purr on the other end of the line, that ASL lessons, if she still wants them – she does – will have to start in the New Year because exams are kicking his ass. She agrees to this easily, saying it’ll have to be after she gets back from celebrating Russian Orthodox Christmas with her family in St Petersburg.

Eventually they agree to meet at Clint and Kate’s apartment at six on the first Tuesday of the semester and Clint freaks out about it for about half an hour after hanging up, before remembering he has two days of practical examinations starting tomorrow and starts freaking out about that instead.

He’s an adult. He can do this.

 

Clint comes home one evening in mid-December after another library binge to find a black beanie on his bed.

“Kate, what the hell is this?” he yells.

“Hat!” calls Kate from the kitchen where she’s stress baking.

“Yes, I got that, thanks! Why?” Clint yells back.

“You were complaining you were cold!”

That, Clint thinks, is a fair point. It’s fucking freezing right now.

“Why’s it got a H on it?” he calls back to her, after staring at the hat a little more.

“Hawkeye!” she replies.

“What?”

“Hawkeye!” she says, her voice getting closer until she appears in his doorway. “Iowa represent! I’ve got one too.”

Kate is covered in flour and wearing a hat identical to the one currently lying on Clint’s bed. The H is very, very purple for no reason Clint can fathom.

“Right.” Clint draws the word out, confusion and disbelief colouring his tone.

“C’mon, it’s awesome, Clint. Matching Hawkeye hats!”

Clint looks at her sceptically. “You make no sense Bishop,” he says eventually.

He keeps the hat though.

 

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Clint does not fail his Christmas exams. Or at least, he doesn’t feel like he has. But he hasn’t got his results yet, so it could be some horrible denial that his brain is feeding him to prevent utter despair. Sounds like something his brain would do.

But anyway, he’s not dead-by-exams. And he’s had a reasonably decent Christmas at Kate’s back in Iowa. Not because he had any burning desire to go back to Iowa; it was more that Kate wouldn’t let him spend Christmas alone any more than she was willing to spend Christmas alone with her dad – her sister Susan is alright, but her dad is a nightmare. So Clint weighed up the benefit of a ridiculously indulgent Bishop Christmas dinner against spending Christmas _at the Bishop’s_ and found that, predictably, food won out.

Also, Clint didn’t want to leave Kate with her dad any more than Kate wanted to be left with him. Clint is a good friend.

New Year’s was better though, by virtue of being back in Virginia with America and a host of other friends watching Steve Rogers try to prevent Bucky Barnes from doing one stupid thing after the other and failing rather spectacularly.

But now it’s Tuesday morning and in six hours Clint has to somehow start teaching Natasha Romanov ASL without having a proximity-induced heart attack.

 

As an introduction to Clint Barton the Not-Professional-But-At-Least-Vaguely-Competent ASL Teacher, this could have gone better.

Natasha Romanov knocks on the door at exactly six pm and, because he has terrible taste in friends, just as Clint opens the door to let her in Kate and America whoop and jump onto his back, Kate pulling his (or maybe hers, he can never tell) H hat over his eyes.

“Christ! What are you? Twelve?” Clint exclaims, blind and staggering under the weight of both Kate and America clinging to his back like monkeys.

“Hi Natasha,” Kate says brightly, completely ignoring Clint’s complaints. “You okay?”

Natasha laughs. “Yes Kate, I’m fine. Can you let go of my teacher now?”

America and Kate slither off Clint’s back, allowing him to push the H hat up far enough to see. Natasha’s grinning at him and it makes him feel a little punch drunk.

“Congratulations, chico,” America says to Clint, as Kate fumbles with their coats and scarves. “You weren’t lying.”

“I _told_ you,” Clint says, managing to tear his eyes away and feeling stupidly vindicated, before he remembers that Natasha is _right there_. He grimaces and turns to Natasha properly. “Hi. Sorry about that, they’re not house trained yet.”

“No, that’s _you,_ Barton,” Kate says as she pulls the H hat off his head and onto hers (ah, so not his. Maybe) and lets America drag her out the door.

“I hate you both!” Clint calls at their retreating backs. He only gets a loud laugh in response.

“Sorry,” he says again, smiling sheepishly. “Um, come in.”

When Natasha removes her coat Clint sees she’s wearing another tight t-shirt, this time with ‘Ambiguity; what happens in Vagueness stays in Vagueness’ on it, and he idly wonders if she has a collection of them; literary and linguistics t-shirts that make him feel uncultured. Then he snaps to in time to shift a bunch of archery equipment off the coat hooks because… Well, coats are fine on the floor, but archery equipment? Archery equipment is certainly _not_.

Unless you’re Natasha. Then your coat gets hung up because Clint’s not a _heathen_.

“I – would you like a drink?” he asks, leading her into the front room. “We have… juice and… beer and wine, I think. And… Coke? And maybe some harder stuff but… that might be a bad idea.”

She’s smiling at him in this way he doesn’t understand; soft and amused. He feels uncomfortable under her gaze and fights to stop his hand from creeping up to the back of his neck – his nervous tell.

“If you’re offering red wine,” she says softly, still smiling, “then I’ll have that.”

Clint brings out a Coke with the red wine. They have alcohol in the house for just these types of occasions – okay no, they mostly have it here for house parties – but that doesn’t mean Clint’s going to drink it. It’s a _thing_.

As he hands Natasha her glass he suddenly realises that he has no idea how or where to start with this.

He laughs quietly to himself as he sits down on the opposite end of the couch. “Sorry,” he says, turning to face her, “I have no idea how to do this. I’ve only ever taught one other person ASL and she learned as I did when we were eleven-ish and – ”

“You’ve never been attracted to Kate,” Natasha butts in, grinning impishly.

Clint almost chokes on his Coke, looking at Natasha with wide eyes. He can feel the heat creeping up his cheeks. “Um.”

She’s still smiling, but it’s kinder. “It’s okay, just start at the beginning. There’s an alphabet right? I know that. And ‘bullshit’ and ‘tampon’. But I don’t know if that’s ASL, BSL, or completely made up.”

Clint’s still looking her wide-eyed – _bullshit and tampon?_

“Where did you – ? You know what, never mind.” He puts his glass on the coffee table and momentarily covers his ears with his hands, listening to everything go muffled and indistinct, before removing them again, taking a deep breath, and saying, “Okay.”

And so Clint Barton teaches Natasha Romanov the very basics of American Sign Language; which, for the record, is awful, because sometimes he has to lean over and readjust her hands and her skin is _so soft._

 

ASL Tuesdays with Natasha becomes a regular thing. She always comes over at six, once she’s finished her stint in the library researching for her Masters, and by this time Clint has just about recovered from Clinic enough to switch from learning medical practice to teaching basic ASL.

So every Tuesday Kate tends to make innuendo-laden comments before disappearing off to America’s apartment – which she shares with some mopey kid called Billy and his built-like-a-house boyfriend Teddy – and Clint gets to spend the evening with one of the most stupidly attractive women he’s ever encountered. It’s kind of excellent really, if a little (read: a lot) sexually frustrating, and it manages to continue – miraculously, considering he’s studying to be a doctor and she’s doing a Masters – uninterrupted until mid-March.

 

“So Barton, where’s your girlfriend?”

Kate has been especially annoying recently. Or maybe annoying is the wrong word – cheerfully smug and self-satisfied is probably more accurate, which is still annoying. But it’s not that surprising; the weekend marked a year since Kate and America started dating and Clint, because he’s a good friend, remembered and buggered off to the madhouse that is Jane and Thor’s for the weekend.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Clint doesn’t want to ask, but he’s pretty sure Kate got laid _a lot_ over the weekend.

Kate rolls her eyes. “If you were anyone else, by now she would be.”

Clint ignores this comment and tries to continue with his clinic assessments.

“She’s at some Russian conference… thing,” he says vaguely. “I dunno. It sounded fancy.”

Kate flops down on the couch. America’s boxing training has been moved to Tuesdays now and Kate hasn’t gone over to Billy and Teddy’s because apparently Clint would be all mopey without Natasha. Which is a lie, he’d like to point out.

She shakes her head mournfully. “And she didn’t invite you along as arm candy? I’ll be having words.”

Clint stares at her.

“One,” he says. “What the fuck? Arm candy? You do remember your eighteenth, don’t you? I make shit arm candy. And two, we _are_ talking about the same person here, right? Natasha can do magnitudes better than me.”

They’re silent for a while then, Kate kicking her legs and generally fidgeting, and Clint trying to fill out his assessments. He can’t really concentrate though; Kate is being distracting and Tuesday’s are normally more fun than this.

Eventually, Kate turns and nudges Clint’s thigh with her toes.

“You’re not the terrible person you seem to think you are, you know,” she says, seemingly apropos of nothing.

And suddenly Clint’s mood plummets. “Huh?”

“Natasha – any woman really – would be lucky to have you.”

Clint scoffs. “Yeah, right. I’m sure Jess is begging to have me back.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Barton,” she says, exasperated. “That was as much her fault as it was yours. I know it, Em knows it, Carol knows it. Hell, even Jess knows it. The only person who seems to think you’re entirely to blame is you.”

Clint rolls his eyes, too used to the feeling of guilt and worthlessness to give up on it just yet. Knowing it and accepting it are two different things, after all.

Kate sighs and shuffles over, gathering up his papers and pens and dumping them on the table, ignoring his indignant, “Hey, I was doing that!” She then wraps herself around Clint; an arm around his neck, the other around his chest, and her head tipped onto his shoulder. He’s effectively trapped. But it’s not _horrible_ and Clinic is a pain anyway.

“Sometimes it’s hard being your friend, Clint,” Kate says quietly after a while and Clint knows she feels him tense because she holds on tighter.

“I’m not going anywhere, Clint,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder, her chin digging in slightly. Clint could turn and they’d be nose to nose, but then he’d have to look at her. “Just. Sometimes I wish you could see yourself how other people see you.”

Clint snorts. “Yeah. As the stressed med student who’s shit at relationships.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Kate’s voice is soft and a bit sad sounding. “But also as the guy who faced off with his best friend’s douchebag ex-boyfriend in a canteen full of people. As the guy who can be relied on to help out in tough situations, who’ll drop everything when a friend really needs help. Who, y’know, will help you move your couch, hold your hair back while you’re throwing up and support you through your ‘bi crisis’.”

She pulls them down until they’re lying awkwardly on the couch, just like they used to do as kids.

“You’re a good guy, Clint. Smart, kind, loyal, and – and I will only say this once, so pay attention – pretty damn good looking.”

She wraps her arms around his shoulders and hugs him tight. “You’re my best friend, Clint. And you are so much better than you believe.”

Clint grips tight onto her t-shirt, trying to control his breathing and listening to her heartbeat under his ear. Once he’s fairly sure he can speak again, he looks up at her and says, “Pretty good looking, eh, Katie-Kate?”

He knows she can see the emotion in his eyes, but he’ll be damned if he’ll _say_ how much that little speech meant to him. Kate can knock him down with a poorly worded sentence – as he can do to her, he’s sure – but she can also make him feel better just as easily.

“Repeat that on pain of death, Barton,” she says, only half joking.

Clint smiles back at her and they wriggle around until they’re comfortable and Kate’s in arms reach of the TV remote. She flicks through channels until she hits on a Friends marathon and Clint relaxes to the sound of Ross yelling, “Pivot!”

Because _Friends_ does wonders for Clint’s mood – you can’t feel crappy when Phoebe’s singing – the first thing out of his mouth when America opens the door is a gleeful, “Katie-Kate thinks I’m good looking!”

Clint has just enough time to see America raise one perfect eyebrow before Kate elbows him _hard_ in the side growling, “Pain of _death_ , Barton.”

The resulting fight is spectacular in its ineptness, with Clint getting a face full of cushion before hitting his elbow on the back of the couch as he pushes Kate off, only for her to grab onto him as she falls. They end up in a tangled heap on the floor, breathless with laughter and groaning; Clint lying on the TV remote and Kate having hit her head on the way down.

Clint sees a pair of boxing shoes wander into his line of vision and he cranes his head to look up. America’s still in her gear – shorts, shoes, and sports bra, although she’s already put her earrings back in as she feels sort of naked without her massive gold hoops – because the gym is closer to their apartment than to hers and apparently the locker rooms there are disgusting.

“I’m going to have a shower,” she says, eyebrow still raised and smirking slightly. “And then I’m going to do you both a favour and never mention this again.”

She then turns and practically saunters out of the room. Clint and Kate watch her go in an almost reverential silence.

“I can’t believe you’re dating a boxer,” Clint finally says, sounding rather breathless – though that could be because most of Kate’s weight is on his chest.

“It’s hot, right?” Kate says, sounding only a little smug.

“So hot,” Clint agrees.

 

It’s close to two in the morning, and Clint should really be sleeping because he has to be at the hospital by eight, but America found The Two Towers on TV and they all agreed that they needed to see the Battle of Helms Deep before they went to bed.

Kate and America are sprawled together on the couch and Clint, due to general laziness and the other chair being covered in laundry, is sat on the floor with his head resting against America’s thigh. On the screen Éowyn is speaking.

_“A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them, and all chance of valour has gone beyond recall or desire.”_

But Aragorn’s reply is drowned out by a knock at the door.

“What the fuck?” says Kate, muffled by America’s hair.

The knock comes again.

“No really, it’s two in the fucking morning!”

There’s a pause and then the knock comes again, more insistently.

“Clint, go get the door.”

“Mmrrg.”

“ _Clint._ ”

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” he grumbles, pushing himself up off the floor and hearing several bones creak in protest.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters and then when the knock comes again, “Alright! I’m coming! Keep your panties – oh.”

Clint wrenches the door open to find Ms Natasha Romanov on the other side, hair and make-up perfect and wearing a floor-length, figure-hugging, cream, halter neck dress with one of those holes cut in them so you can see, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she’s not wearing a bra.

Women with endless curves sort of _do_ things to Clint, so he only manages to gape stupidly.

“Can I come in?” she asks.

Clint continues to gape, and Kate’s, “Clint, shut the door!” is followed by a quiet, “Oh” and some muffled expletives as Kate and America shuffle on the couch – or at least, that’s what it sounds like; Clint couldn’t look away if you paid him –so they can both stare at the woman in the doorway.

“Right,” Natasha says. “I’m assuming that’s a ‘yes’.” She steps into the front room and gently takes the door from Clint’s hand, shutting it with a quiet snap. The sound of a sword fight comes from the TV, but otherwise there’s silence.

“The party was a monumental waste of time and then Yelena buggered off with some boy toy, my phone, and the house keys. Your place was closest.”

Clint manages an eloquent, “Um…”

Natasha’s lips are very red, but they’re safer to look at than her boobs.

Natasha waits a little, presumably for someone to say something more intelligent, but when no one is forthcoming she smiles a little and says quietly, “It’s a good thing I’m not a vampire or this would have been happening with the door still open. And it’s pretty chilly out, did you know?”

She touches Clint’s arm and the shock of it makes him snap his eyes to hers. They’re really blue. And Clint is so fucked.

“Can I borrow some clothes?” she asks him.

He has trouble processing the request until Kate snaps, “Barton, clothes!” and Clint practically jumps out of his skin, only now becoming aware that Natasha’s hand _is still on his arm_.

“Right! Yes! Clothes. Make yourself… comfortable? Um…”

He turns and comes face to face with Kate who, he is sure, can see the absolute terror on his face. She smiles and says, “Go, Clint. Get the lady something comfortable,” before drawing Natasha over to the couch and asking her about the party, Yelena’s boy toy, her dress.

Clint finds himself in Kate’s room, trying to find something of America’s that’ll fit Natasha. Most of her stuff is on the chair… he thinks. But he’s sure he’s seen Kate in that shirt. Does that make it Kate’s? Will it fit Tasha? Tasha – _Natasha_ – has… well. If it’s Kate’s it’ll be tighter across the chest.

He’s so absorbed in the task, resolutely trying to push down every thought relating to Natasha in that dress and him looking like he’s only recently rolled out of bed, and how _she is so much better than him holy fuck,_ that he fails to hear America come into the room behind him.

“What are you doing, chico?”

“Um…” Clint finds he’s holding one of Kate’s bras and drops it quickly. “Finding clothes?”

America sighs and comes into the room properly. She steers him until he’s sat on the bed, then sits beside him, pushing all the clothes he’s found off the foot of the bed and onto the floor.

“When a woman like Natasha comes over dressed like that,” America explains, “and asks to borrow some clothes, while looking at _you_ , it means that she wants them to be _your_ clothes, Clint. It means she wants to take off that gorgeous and flattering dress and put on _your_ comfy pyjama pants and _your_ t-shirt.”

Clint feels as though his brain has shut down. “But – ”

“Clint,” she says, shaking him gently by the shoulder. “If everyone only got what they _thought_ they deserved, the only people in the world with anything good would be dicks.”

She smiles at him.

“If you asked me if I thought I _deserved_ Kate, I’d tell you no; she can do way better than me. If you asked Kate if she thought she deserved me, she’d probably say no and that I could do better than her. But if I asked _you_ if me and Kate deserve each other you’d say…?”

“Of course you do, you’re both awesome,” he says promptly, because _duh_.

“Right,” America smiles at him. “You’re awesome, Clint. And Natasha seems pretty awesome and blindingly gorgeous to boot. This isn’t about deserving.”

She gets up off the bed and hauls him to his feet.

“Now. Go get your comfiest slouchy clothes, I’ll find her a bra.”

Feeling slightly less like his heart is in his knees, Clint starts for the door.

“And chico?”

Clint turns at the sound of her voice.

“Even if this was about deserving, don’t ever disrespect Natasha by disregarding her opinion when it comes to you. She’s fully capable of making her own choices and apparently she’s chosen to turn up in the middle of the night and demand your clothes. You gotta respect that.”

America has a slight smirk on and her eyebrow is raised, but her eyes are kind. Clint takes a deep breath, nods at her, and leaves the room.

_You can do this Barton._

 

Clint returns to the front room with a pair of his favourite pyjama pants and a t-shirt he was given by Kate when he was fifteen, which is worn and soft due to innumerable washes. Kate, America and Natasha are sat on the couch chatting, but Natasha gets up when Clint enters the room, smiling as she takes the clothes from him and heads to the bathroom to change.

Slightly at a loss, Clint catches sight of the TV to find that the elves have turned up at Helms Deep and, thankfully, he hasn’t missed his favourite bit. He reclaims his place on the floor in front of the couch and watches as the storm breaks, Uruk-hai spears drumming a heartbeat-rhythm until volley after of volley of arrows rain down.

Natasha comes back as the Uruk-hai storm the Deeping Wall. No one has moved the laundry off the other chair, but when Clint moves as if to get up Natasha shakes her head and instead sits next to him on the floor, her head leaning against the armrest. She’s removed her make-up and jewellery and taken her hair down. She looks softer and smaller, and Clint gets a small thrill seeing her dressed in his clothes.

The sweeping solo of Haldir’s death fills the room and Clint suddenly feels Natasha’s head on his shoulder. He’s not sure what to do, but her hair smells wonderful – citrus and mint and _Natasha_ – and he fights to not pinch himself. Being with Jess was never this terrifying and he’s not even _with_ Natasha.

As Gandalf and Éomer charge into the Deeping Comb he can hear America and Kate shift, and Kate sleepily mutter, “Oh, good, the good bits are over. Bed now. Bed, bed,” and patting Em’s leg. But Natasha’s voice comes then, softly saying, “No, wait for Sam’s speech.”

So they stay and listen to Sam speak of how “ _There’s some good in the world, Mr Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for”._ And by that time they might as well watch to the end; Natasha’s breath ghosting over his shoulder and – when did that happen? – her fingers curled into one of his belt loops.

 

Clint tries to take the couch and let Natasha have his bed, but he’s herded into his room by Kate and America, Natasha trailing behind and smirking. He stares at her for a moment before deciding that he’s too tired to have another minor freak-out. Instead he asks which side of the bed she wants, warns her his alarm is set to go off in four hours’ time, and tries, when they’re both settled, to ignore how close Natasha is, how good she smells, and how much he wants to wrap himself around her, push his hands under her (his) t-shirt, and just _hold on_.

After a few minutes of darkness he feels her shift and, suddenly, her lips are brushing his cheek and she’s saying, “Thank you,” loud enough for him to hear despite having removed his hearing aids.

“What for?” he all but breathes out.

But she doesn’t answer. She just turns over and, to all intents and purposes, falls asleep.

 

When Clint’s alarm goes off early the next morning he wakes to find Natasha’s hair in his face and that they’re very close together for two people who aren’t actually touching.

Clint lends her more clothes – sweatpants this time and a hoodie, along with a pair of Kate’s trainers – and manages to find her both breakfast and a bag for last night’s clothes. And then, wheeling his bike, he walks with her down to the meeting of Pym and Fifth.

“Thanks for letting me stay over,” Natasha says when they reach the junction, turning to face him and looking unbelievably soft and beautiful in the morning light.

Clint laughs a little – blushing, smiling, and ducking his head – because it’s early and she’s gorgeous and he’s tired enough to entertain the idea that maybe Kate and Em are right; that he can just give in and trust himself not to fuck up.

“No worries, Tasha,” he says quietly. “Any time.”

“Hey Clint,” she says as he swings himself onto his bike.

He turns back to look at her, standing on the street in her borrowed clothes.

“Smile more,” she says.

And Clint grins all the way to the hospital.

 

Three days later a bag is left hanging on their front door. In it is America’s bra, Kate’s trainers and Clint’s sweatpants and hoodie.

It takes a while for Clint to remember that he lent Natasha a t-shirt as well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a bad day turns into a good day turns into a date.

Clint has always had good memories of  _The Two Towers_ , but after that night it takes on a whole new level of significance. And that’s good, great even, and he’s happy to keep that night as some sort of isolated event; a wonderful one off that’s more than he deserves. But instead, after that night, things get a little… weird.

ASL Tuesdays fall by the wayside as Natasha starts to write her thesis proper and Clint gets buried under clinic work and applying for rotation placements for his fourth year. Which is fine. But then Natasha starts turning up when he’s in the library, taking up the fifty centimetre squared space Clint hasn’t managed to cover in paper for her incredibly sleek MacBook Pro. He’s not really sure what to do with that, because she’s friendly and polite and teasing, and he feels like he’s crossed some line he didn’t know was there, falling into some weird Twilight Zone where really hot women actually want to hang out with him.

And  _then_  she starts crashing his Wednesday Afternoon Café Sessions, where she’ll read, chat, work a little and, when she decides Clint needs a break, get him to run over some ASL with her. This is also when Clint finds out that Natasha is close friends with Steve Rogers from behind the counter at the café, which shouldn’t surprise him but somehow does anyway. Clint has hung out with Rogers on and off since starting at Culver, despite the fact that Rogers went to Willowdale Community College, and, if the two of them are such good friends, Clint doesn’t really understand how he’s never met Natasha before now. That being said, as Clint has a little insight to the twelve million things Natasha does outside of studying he’s not that surprised.

So it’s weird – mainly because she seems to know his schedule, something he’s inclined to blame on Kate – but it’s also nice.

She explains her thesis to him and he doesn’t understand a word. He explains what he’s currently learning and she looks mildly alarmed at the strings of medical terms that trip off his tongue. One Sunday she listens to an impassioned speech about the reasons Mary-the-textbook-example is a  _fucking moron_  and follows it up with a story about a man she did translations for a couple of years ago who was most likely dropped on his head by his nanny as a child, because he was both entitled  _and_  stupid.

Somehow Natasha persuades him to get dinner with her one Wednesday and it’s almost like a date, apart from how he’s lugging around two tons of textbooks and she’s wearing her hair in a messy bun and a t-shirt that declares  _Hyperbole is the best thing ever!_  Those dinners sort of become a regular thing after that, but they’re not dates – at least, he’s pretty sure. She’s not  _said_.

Then, in a fit of madness, he brings her along to his archery class one Sunday morning and proceeds to try very,  _very_  hard to ignore Kate’s knowing looks when she sees them together. It doesn’t mean anything – it doesn’t, it doesn’t – because Natasha is so much cooler and classier than him that that’s almost a laughable thought. It also doesn’t become a regular thing though, because one, watching other people do archery isn’t hugely exciting, and two, Natasha is very bad for Clint’s concentration.

Point one is the only one he tells Natasha though.

So that goes on for about a month, and Clint is torn between being thrilled to have such an awesome friend and terrified at the intensity with which he sometimes wants to tear her clothes off with his teeth.

 

He also spends that month trying – really trying – not to sink into that mind-set where everything’s wrong and pointless and he’s not good enough – in general, but also as a potential  _anything_  for Natasha. It works most of the time, though it’s hard when clinic is getting ridiculous and he’s tired  _all the time_.

It’s made easier though by the lingering fear that America will be able to  _tell_. See, one day he was in his room, buried under paper and thinking every shithead back home was right and that he was an idiot for ever thinking he could do this, when suddenly America just said, “Clint, don’t,” sharply from the door before continuing on to the bathroom, or wherever she was going. Fucking scared the crap out of him.

 

[wen r u comin home 2nite?]

_[Real words or I’m not replying Clint.]_

Clint rolls his eyes and manages a smile, which is something at least. Kate Bishop, ladies and gentlemen.

[Are you coming home late tonight?]

_[Better. Yes. For future reference: never leave your thesis this late. It’s a terrible idea.]_

[And Em?]

_[Boxing. Then back to hers. You know this. What’s up?]_

Clint stares at the screen of his phone for a long while, wondering what the best way to explain is.  _Natasha is coming over and I didn’t want you to interrupt_  is true, but then again so is  _Today has been horrifying and I need you here._

He ends up with, [ASL back on but mostly this is the worst fucking day.]

Kate is in the library, being studious and finally getting her thesis sorted. Which is a good thing too seeing as she’s had about six months and the deadline is in three weeks’ time. But it’s Kate, she’ll be fine. She can pull this sort of stuff out of her head at a moment’s notice; she doesn’t have to fucking  _slave_  like Clint does. He’d be jealous if she was smug about it, but she’s not so he’s okay. It does mean, however, that if she’s in the zone it can take her a while to reply to his texts. This one comes back almost immediately though.

_[Shit. What happened???]_

If he actually tells Kate what happened she’ll come home because she’s awesome like that. But she really needs to do her research and Natasha is coming over, and Clint is torn between calling ASL off and getting Kate back here  _stat_  versus wanting Natasha over so he can pretend today didn’t happen.

[Tell you later,] he finally texts, because Natasha is coming over soon anyway and at least that way, Clint won’t have the vague guilt of pulling someone away from something more important.

_[You okay?]_

[I will be.]

_[I’m holding you to that.]_

 

Clint thinks opening the door to Natasha Romanov will never get old, even if her expression immediately falls and the first words out of her mouth are, “Are you okay?”

Clint sighs and lets her in.

“Yeah I’m fine,” he says and then, at her arched eyebrow and disbelieving look, he amends that to, “No? I mean, I’m… It’s… Hey, I had an idea.”

“This is you deflecting.”

“Masterfully,” Clint agrees. “I think we should spend ASL Tuesdays speaking entirely in ASL now. I’ve got you as far as I can with my mediocre teaching skills – ”

“You’re a good teacher, Clint,” Natasha interrupts.

“ – and from now on I’ll just, like, correct you and help you with new words et cetera, et cetera. How does that sound?”

Natasha studies him for a few moments and Clint fights not to fidget under her gaze.

“Alright then,” she says finally removing her jacket and hanging it up by Clint’s quiver on the coat hooks. “Though we’ll probably be stopping a lot. I’m nowhere near fluent.”

Clint isn’t paying all that much attention though, because he suddenly realises that he knows that t-shirt.

“Is that – ?” Clint starts to say, but Natasha cuts him off with surprisingly quick hands.

 _No talking, remember?_  she signs before moving to the couch and Clint follows, because really,  _she’s wearing his t-shirt_. Holy shit.

 _What is wrong, then?_  Natasha carefully and deliberately signs once she’s settled on the couch, and Clint’s mood drops again.

He repositions her hands slightly, but then shrugs and looks away. He was trying to forget this, but deflecting is harder when his hands move quicker than hers; when he has  _more words_  than her. He never has more words, he’s never the most articulate person, and it’s disconcerting now that he can’t communicate properly for exactly the opposite reason to normal.

 _Clint_ , she signs, using the custom sign for his name: the letter C turned on its side and pulled back, as if releasing an arrow from a bow. Kate invented it and, because they both did archery, it became her name sign as well, just with a K rather than a C. Natasha doesn’t have one yet.

Clint idly thinks about explaining so rapidly she won’t be able to follow, but decides that’d be a douche move of epic proportions. He also contemplates not explaining at all, but comes to the same conclusion.

 _My first patient died today_ , is what he signs instead – deliberately, so she can follow.

Her eyes follow his hands, and he watches her work it out, watches her put together the hand motions to make something she understands. But when her eyes suddenly snap to his all he can see is the old woman from earlier today. Melissa, her name was. She was eighty eight, had had two heart attacks and her son hadn’t visited as often as she’d have liked. She said Clint reminded her of her brother and she’d died at 11:26 this morning, from natural causes. Clint had seen her twice a day for the past nine days and he’d been there when the doctor verified the death.

“Clint,” Natasha says, out loud this time, quiet and worried and sad, and Clint quickly signs  _no talking remember?_  because if he hears any more he’s probably going to end up crying. He hasn’t cried since he was fourteen and isn’t about to start now.

She doesn’t say anything more, but he can feel her looking at him even though he can’t return her gaze. Instead he studies the couch cushions and listens to all the small ambient sounds of the house. And he hears when she moves forward on the couch, giving a moments’ warning before her hand is holding his. He grips back, and she’s pulling, and suddenly he’s sprawled uncomfortably half in her lap with his face buried in her neck, taking huge gulping breaths and holding on so hard he  _has_  to be hurting her. But she just rubs circles on his back and keeps repeating something in a language he doesn’t understand, Russian probably. It’s calming, and Natasha smells really good, and his t-shirt –  _that she’s wearing_  – is soft against his cheek.

Clint knows that he’ll have to get used to this feeling, because there are going to be other Melissas, so many other Melissas, and he’ll have to be the one to verify the death, or to call time of death, or tell the family or friends, or all three. But sometimes he forgets – because he’s worrying about exams and essays and his GPA – that this whole job he’s gearing towards deals with the lives and deaths and wellbeing of  _people_  and right now he’s wondering if he can do this and  _why_  he ever wanted to do this in the first place, when it hurts so much and he didn’t even  _know her_.

(But he knows why, of course he does; because it was a doctor who noticed and _kept_ noticing. Who told him it was safe to tell even though she knew he likely never would. It was a nurse who gave him cookies and let him choose the colour of his casts. A doctor who understood why he was happy when he was told the news and a nurse who helped find him ASL lessons. Clint owes his life to medical staff and not in the usual way, and he wants to pay that kindness forward – because if he doesn’t his dad _wins_.)

When he finally feels a little less like he’s drowning, Clint pulls away, but he doesn’t get far because Natasha’s hands tighten on his shoulders preventing him for moving more than a couple of inches from her face. Her eyes are very blue and are asking what she’s smart enough not to say out loud. Because of course he’s not okay, even if he feels a bit better now.

Slowly, Clint becomes aware of her hands – how they’re curling under his jaw with her thumbs stroking over his stubble – and that  _his_  hands are incredibly close to her waist, holding his entire weight over her body, their legs awkwardly tangled, half on and half off the couch.

And then all of a sudden Clint remembers that he’s horrendously attracted to Natasha Romanov.

It’s a cliché and if anyone ever said it to him he’d roll his eyes  _so hard_ , but in this case it’s totally true: Clint really couldn’t tell you who leaned in first. All he knows is that he’s kissing Natasha Romanov in his front room and it’s every bit as amazing as he thought it would be.

She wraps her arms around his neck and he tries to wrap his arms around her waist in return, but all his weight is on his hands and he can’t move without overbalancing. Their legs are in all the wrong positions until – okay,  _there_  – Natasha moves, accidentally kicking him in the side and huffing out a laugh into his mouth. Then they shift and everything lines up perfectly and he’s settling into place between her legs while she tips them both backwards to land in among the couch cushions.

And maybe, just maybe, this day isn’t so bad after all.

Natasha’s hands move, first scratching her nails over his scalp – and he fucking  _moans_  at that – before wandering under his t-shirt.

It is at this moment that Clint’s brain decides to come back online specifically to assault him with doubt, because Clint’s brain is terrible and doesn’t want him to have nice things ever. Fucking brain.

“Are you…?” he manages to get out between kisses before stopping short.

 _Sure_ , is what he wants to say. But sure of what he doesn’t know. ‘Sure of this?’ – she evidently is. ‘Sure of me?’ – again, she seems pretty sure, all things considered.

Clint doesn’t know where he’s going with this, and the only thing  _he_  is totally sure of is that there is still a little part of his brain that is convinced America is going to turn up and smack him upside the head for pausing midway through kissing a  _really hot girl_  to doubt her commitment.

‘To sparkle motion’ his brain supplies stupidly, so instead of finishing his – utterly pointless – question, he laughs and shakes his head, grinning down at Natasha.

“What?” she says, looking flushed and happy and so goddamned beautiful.

“Nothing,” Clint replies, grinning wider. “My brain’s just being stupid.”

Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Get back down here, jackass,” she says, tugging at his shoulders. But Clint doesn’t. Instead he smirks down at her and slides his hands under her (his) t-shirt, slowly sliding it up to reveal inch after glorious inch of pale smooth skin, before pulling it over her head.

Natasha gasps quietly and grips his arms tight as Clint ducks down and starts mouthing along her stomach while his hands wander up and down her sides, making her squirm as he finds all the places she’s ticklish. He can feel her muscles tremble under his mouth and, as her legs tighten around his waist, he realises that  _holy shit_  she’s still wearing her heeled boots and that’s ridiculously hot. He moves upwards over her bra to suck bruises onto her collarbones and the tops of her frankly magnificent breasts until she loses patience – and fuck, those noises she makes are amazing and Clint could easily become addicted to making her breath catch – and drags him back up to her mouth again.

They set a languid pace and Clint feels like he’s losing hours and hours to Natasha, time skipping until it’s as though this is the only thing he’s ever done, is ever supposed to do: kiss Natasha Romanov on an old couch in his apartment at Culver University.

At this point Clint isn’t really aware of anything further than Natasha – her hands in his hair, her heels pressed into his back, the taste of her mouth, the acres of bare skin against his chest. So when a voice loudly says, “Well, there certainly doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with _you_ ,” from the vicinity of the door, Clint jumps so badly he loses his balance, pulling Natasha and himself off the couch and onto the floor in a jumble of arms and legs.

There’s a beat of silence in which Clint can’t work out what happened and Natasha is pulling herself up, skin flushed red and hair wild. Then there’s a choking sound, again from by the door, and America – because of course it’s America, because Kate probably asked her to check up on him – dissolves into helpless, hysterical laughter. There are tears streaming down her face and she’s desperately trying to keep herself upright by bracing herself on the table by the door.

Natasha looks down at him from where she’s sat haphazardly across his hips; eyes bright, mouth spit-slick and shiny, and her hair a disaster thanks to his hands. It’s a good look on her.

She smirks down at him and, at his indignant and bewildered expression, she too descends into helpless laughter, doubling over, curling her hands into the waistband of his jeans, and resting her forehead on his sternum, the force of her laughter shaking through him.

Clint tries, really tries, to remain indignant, because he knows that Em will tell Kate about this, and it’ll become another story in the Stupid Shit Clint’s Done arsenal and he’ll be ribbed about it _forever_. But America looks ridiculous – hair a mess and still in her boxing gear and she hasn’t even got her earrings in – and she came over because she and Kate were worried about him.

He’s got amazing fucking friends. And, even better right now, a really hot girl sat across his hips not at all pissed that said awesome friends interrupted a rather epic, high school-esque make-out session.

Today is definitely looking up.

“¡Lo siento!” Em gasps through laughter. “I’m sorry, but _Dios_ , you looked like a fucking bush baby.” Natasha falls about laughing again at this comment while Em continues, “Your hair on end and your eyes all…!” She pulls a face and then dissolves into fresh bouts of laughter, the occasional “¡Dios mío!” escaping between attempts to catch her breath.

It takes a while for Em and Natasha to calm down enough for the laughter to subside into half-hearted complaints about the pain in their sides and all the while Clint lies on the floor, grinning at the ceiling.

 

Em leaves a short while later, once her legs can support her and she has in no way promised not to tell Kate what happened. Not that Clint’s surprised, but he figured he should make a token protest nonetheless.

In all this time Natasha hasn’t moved from her new position straddling Clint’s hips. He does try to move her at one point so he can properly thank Em for turning up – she didn’t have to after all, and he’s grateful even if he sort of wishes she hadn’t, all things considered – but Natasha smirks at him and somehow makes herself _heavier_ , pressing down in such a way that Clint can’t shift her without pitching her into the coffee table. In the end he settles for patting Em awkwardly on the knee when she affectionately kicks him in the shoulder.

Once the door has snapped shut Clint returns his attention to the woman sat on top of him. Natasha’s hands are still curled into the waistband of his jeans and the hot press of her fingers on his stomach is sort of really distracting. But not as distracting as the look on her face.

“You don’t mind?” Natasha asks eventually.

“Mind what?” Clint asks. He’s hard pressed to think coherently when hot women are straddling him.

“America.”

“What? Mind that she interrupted?” Clint says. “Yeah, a bit. Mind that I have awesome friends who care when I’m feeling shitty? Not at all.”

He slides his hand further up her thighs, where he realises they’ve been almost since they… _relocated_ to the floor, and looks up at her. The red flush has faded somewhat (what a shame), but her hair is still a disaster and her bra is pretty and blue – something he didn’t notice the first time ‘round.

Clint is about to say something when Natasha moves, one of her hands coming up to press _hard_ on what Clint has to assume will be a bruise on his collarbone tomorrow because the dull ache makes him gasp, before sweeping across the bump where his collarbone never reset properly from when it broke when he was eight. She frowns at this, but Clint really, _really_ doesn’t want to talk about it, so he shakes his head minutely, his gaze sliding away only to snap back to her face when he feels her shift again.

Natasha leans over him, her forearms resting either side of his head and her breasts pressing into his chest. Her face is less than an inch from his and Clint’s feels trapped in the cage of her body, with all he can feel being _skinskinskin_ and Natasha’s heartbeat against his chest as her hands gently stroke through his hair. He can’t move away and doesn’t really want to.

“Ты удивительный,” she says quietly, before kissing him.

“What?”

Clint’s voice is quiet and slightly breathless, but he doesn’t care. He really, really doesn’t because Natasha also sounds quiet and breathless, and slightly amazed as well, and he can’t think of anything about him that would warrant that tone of voice.

Natasha shakes her head and kisses him again in answer, before slowly pulling away and climbing off him. Clint misses her weight and heat almost immediately, and he stares up at her stupidly for a second – and at the hand she’s offering him – before latching on and being pulled up up up back into her space, only now he’s looking down at her.

He feels punch drunk and unsteady on his feet. They’re dishevelled, with wrecked hair and tender lips and both still wearing their jeans. Hell, Natasha is still wearing _her boots,_ and she hasn’t yet let go of his hand.

“Good first date, huh?” Natasha says, smiling slightly.

“Huh?”

Natasha’s smile widens. “Let me take you to dinner.”

“Aren’t I supposed to ask you that?”

“Were you going to?”

But Clint can’t answer because, if he’s honest, no he wasn’t. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because, well. Why the fuck would she say yes?

Natasha nods at his silence, taking it as the ‘no’ she knows it to be.

“Wear something fancy.”

“I don’t own anything fancy,” Clint replies automatically, still playing catch-up because _Natasha Romanov asked him out to dinner_.

“Wear that then,” she says, gesturing at his current attire.

“I can’t just wear jeans to dinner,” he protests.

Natasha gives him a slow once-over, smirking at his mussed hair, marked collarbones and the pretty obvious tent in his jeans.

“Shame,” she says, slow and low and hot as fuck.

Clint blinks at her stupidly, and when she kisses him again he’s too slow and she pulls away before he can hold on and… he’s not sure. Drag her to his room and not let her go, _ever_. That sounds good.

Natasha smiles at him again, clearly amused at his impression of someone who’s been hit over the head with a brick, or whatever he looks like now. Then she drops his hand and, ignoring her (his) t-shirt on the couch, puts her jacket back on, zipping black leather over her blue bra and flushed skin. A strip tease in reverse.

Clint wonders what her underwear looks like.

“Tomorrow, seven, Smokey Joe’s,” she says as she opens the door, little slivers of skin appearing and disappearing between her jacket and jeans.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Clint says stupidly, snapping back into the present. Imagining Natasha in lacy underwear isn’t as good as having Natasha _here_. “Why?”

And Natasha grins, huge and showing teeth, and Clint feels even more dazed.

“Because it’s nearly midnight and you have to be at the hospital for six tomorrow morning.”

“You know my schedule?” he asks, even though he already knew this. _Of course_ he knew this. How else can she know when he’s in the library? He just didn’t realise it was also like this, that she knew the times; when his shifts start, when he has to get up.

“Yes,” she says simply.

And because he’s an idiot, because he’s punch-drunk and high on her mouth, because _where is Em to slap him upside the head when he needs her_ he says, “Why?” before he can stop himself.

Natasha pauses for a moment, and Clint is suddenly horribly worried that whatever is going to come out of her mouth is going to be awful – ‘Ha! Got you!’ – but instead she says, “You make me happy.”

And when he doesn’t – _can’t_ – say anything in return she darts into the room again, kissing him hard and hot and brutal before saying, “Goodnight солнышко , see you tomorrow,” and closing the door behind her with a snap.

 

Clint stands in the front room for about five minutes after she leaves trying to comprehend a world where someone like Natasha Romanov likes _him_ enough to ask him out for dinner, but he can’t wrap his head around it. So instead he goes for a shower and contemplates, for all of two seconds, willing his hard on to go away on its own. But Clint’s not good at abstinence, so he gives in and grips his dick, thinking of flawless skin and magnificent breasts and coming faster than he has in ages.

Afterwards he stares at himself in the mirror, trying to see anything other than a too-stressed guy with a horrific childhood and better friends than he deserves before giving up and climbing into bed.

Ten minutes later he gets up again to find his t-shirt from the front room – not the one he’d been wearing, but the one _she’d_ been wearing. Clint falls asleep surrounded by the smell of Natasha and idly wondering if this whole day would turn out to have been some kind of wonderful dream.

 

Half-way through his shift the next day – which for any other job would be a lunch break but on this shift corresponds roughly with elevenses – Clint texts Kate, who has Wednesday mornings free and is probably lounging in Em’s bed while she’s in class.

[Natasha asked me out to dinner tonight] Clint sends, munching on a sandwich with his feet propped up on a chair in the break room.

Kate’s answer comes almost immediately.

_[You telling me this is you freaking out]_

Clint doesn’t dignify that with an answer and another text arrives not two minutes later.

_[Where are you going?]_

[Smokey Joe’s]

_[Wear the suit jacket I got you for my 18 th.]_

Kate’s eighteenth birthday was one of many epic watershed moments in their friendship for Getting Through Shit Together. Kate’s father, a big-shot publishing magnate, had decided that his daughter’s eighteenth was going to be a grand affair befitting the daughter of a CEO, despite the fact that Kate had resisted any and all attempts at similar things throughout her life. He’d done the same for Susan’s eighteenth, he’d argued, and she’d loved it. But Kate is not her sister.

Kate had fought tooth and nail against it and then, when it was clear that her father wouldn’t back down on this, she’d decided that if _she_ had to suffer through it, Clint was damn well going to suffer through it too. Clint had been living with the Bishops at the time and couldn’t really say no, so he was whisked off for suit fittings and bought a hundred and one expensive things that he didn’t need and couldn’t give back: shoes, cufflinks, a watch.

He’d got a haircut that had cost more than any item of clothing he’d ever bought for himself and had had to spend seven hours pretending to know and care about the types of things socialites knew and cared about. It had been truly horrific and Clint had only stopped complaining about it after he extracted a promise from Kate to never _ever_ put him through anything like that _ever again_.

Two days later, on her actual birthday, Clint had taken Kate on his bike down to the creek on the outskirts of town, where he used to go as a kid to escape his house. It was warm enough to be out after dark, and they watched the sun set and the lightning bugs come out before Clint took them back to her house. He gave her two CDs that she’d wanted and a silver bracelet he’d saved a month’s wages for.

She still wears that bracelet which Clint is stupidly pleased about.

About a week later he’d tried to give her back all the stuff from her party – the suit and the watch and the cufflinks – but she’d point-blank refused to take them. “I didn’t pay for them and my dad sure as hell doesn’t need the money,” she’d said, and eventually he realised that they were a gift from her. Not the suit and the watch and the cufflinks, but the money; the money she knew Clint wouldn’t take any other way. Between the cufflinks and the watch alone Clint could pay for half a year’s worth of out-of-state tuition. He kept the suit though, because he wanted a physical reminder of everything he owed Kate Bishop.

It wouldn’t fit anyone else anyway.

[Suit jacket. Got it] Clint texts back, finishing up his sandwich.

 _[And a nice t-shirt and jeans]_ Kate continues.

Clint frowns. [Really?]

_[You’re going to Smokey Joe’s, not the Ritz. Yes really]_

Clint can _see_ her eye roll.

_[Come home before you go out. No going straight there with 2 tons of books]_

The texts are coming in thick and fast now, and Clint is torn between staying to see what Kate has to say and leaving to get back to the ward on time.

_[And SHOWER]_

Clint stays.

_[I don’t trust you. I’ll be checking up. I’ll be home by 6. DON’T LEAVE THE HOUSE BEFORE I TURN UP]_

Clint frowns at his phone again. [Since when do you care what I wear on dates?]

_[Since you started dating Natasha AKA hottest woman who isn’t Em]_

[Jess was hot] Clint replies, slightly indignant on Jess’ behalf.

_[But not this hot]_

Clint has to concede that. Jess is very attractive, but Natasha is even more so. Clint then pulls a face, because comparing the two of them is unbelievably crass, even in the privacy of his own mind.

[OK OK. I’ve got to get back to work. See you]

Kate’s parting shot comes just as Clint goes to dump his phone in his hospital-provided locker.

_[I MEAN IT BARTON. DON’T LEAVE BEFORE I GET HOME.]_

 

Despite serious misgivings, Clint _does_ wait for Kate when he gets home. But she’s running late and only just manages to catch him as he leaves the house convinced _he’s_ going to be late.

“Are you seriously going to wear those?” is the first thing she says, pointing at his battered Chuck’s.

“Yes,” Clint says shortly.

“You should wear your dress shoes.”

“They pinch.”

“They pinch,” Kate says patiently, “because you don’t wear them enough.”

“Alas,” Clint says dramatically in return, “a catch-22 that I shall never escape from.”

Kate rolls her eyes.

“Seriously Kate,” Clint says. “I’m wearing an Armani jacket worth more than anything else I own. I’m good.”

“Dior,” Kate interjects.

“What?”

“It’s a Dior jacket,” Kate explains, for probably the hundredth time. “Your suit is Dior, not Armani.”

“Whatever.” Clint dismisses this information like he always does. What does it matter? One stupidly expensive suit is the same as the next in his eyes. “The point still stands.”

Kate gives him a once-over and sighs. “I guess. You do look very…”

“Dashing?” Clint supplies helpfully. “Sexy?”

“You,” Kate finishes.

Clint arches an eyebrow. “What the fresh fuck does that mean?”

“You know.” Kate waves her hand vaguely. “You still look like Clint, rather than like you’re trying too hard or whatever.”

“And that’s a compliment?” Clint says doubtfully. “I’m taking that as a compliment.”

Kate smiles and shakes her head. “Are you cycling there?”

“Well, how else am I going to get there?” he asks.

“Fine, fine.” She gives him another once-over, taking in his Chuck’s, dark jeans, white t-shirt, and horribly expensive jacket. She then makes shooing motions with her hands, as if it’s not her fault that he’s running late. “You look good. Go win the heart of the fair maiden.”

He shoots Kate an incredulous look before swinging himself onto his bike. “Right, I’ll do that,” he mutters before pushing off down the road.

“I hope you showered!” Kate calls after him.

“Of course I fucking showered, jackass!” Clint yells back. “Jesus Christ.”

 

The problem with cycling everywhere is two fold: one, there’s the whole windswept, dishevelled thing that happens if you’re cycling for more than, oh, about two seconds. And two, you always have to find somewhere to chain your bike up, and Culver University and Willowdale in general seem loath to provide such places. Clint has to go ‘round the block from Smokey Joe’s before he finds a railing he can chain his bike to, which means Natasha is waiting outside by the time he makes it back to the restaurant.

As soon as he sees her he sort of really regrets not wearing his dress shoes, even if it would have made cycling here a pain in the hole.

Natasha is wearing these wide legged black trousers that hide what Clint assumes are stupidly high heels because she looks taller than usual, a silky red blouse, and her leather jacket. And somehow the whole outfit just makes him painfully aware that he’s wearing three year old purple Chuck’s, rather than something… y’know, classier.

But she smiles bright and happy when she sees him and gives him the kind of once over that makes him forget about what shoes he’s wearing, so he figures he’s okay.

Natasha greets him with a, “Hey, солнышко,” and a quick kiss on the lips.

“You’re not going to tell me what that means, are you?” he says, as he leans in to return her kiss.

“Now, where would the fun be in that?”

She smirks, small and secret and Clint feels his heart clench. He is so screwed.

“Now come on,” she continues, turning and pulling him by the hand into the restaurant. “I have a craving for steak.”

 

The good thing about only being asked out for dinner by a hot girl _the night before_ is that Clint really didn’t have time to freak out properly. As such, he’s probably less nervous than he might otherwise have been and manages to treat this dinner like every other Wednesday dinner they’ve had together, just with fancier clothes and more touching. Which is a _really good addition_.

They somehow manage to talk nonstop for the entire meal and at one point, during Clint regaling Natasha with stories from his hospital shifts, they’re laughing so hard that they actually get shushed by a couple at the next table over. So Clint pulls out his inner juvenile delinquent and imitates them, which leads to Natasha putting on a thick Russian accent and telling him stories of the various Russian oligarchs she’s met through her uncle, complete with opera references and cultured snobbery. Thankfully this all happens close to the end of their meal, so they don’t actually get asked to leave. Rather they quickly pay the bill after Clint knocks the rest of Natasha’s wine onto the floor and they’re laughing too much to do anything other than pat ineffectually at the spill with their napkins.

They end up, slightly tipsy, under a lamppost in the park a block from the restaurant. Their laughter has subsided somewhat; the shock of the cool, early April air enough to calm them. Clint is also stuck again on knowing that _Natasha Romanov asked him out_. It makes him feel loopy and elated, and keeps him within touching distance of her at all times, just to assure himself that it’s actually real.

Her arm is very warm through the silk of her blouse and the cotton of his t-shirt. They’re both carrying their jackets, even though it’s cool enough out to wear them. It’s as if putting them back on would signal the end of the night and neither of them are ready for that yet.

“So,” says Natasha eventually, and Clint is irrationally terrified that she’s about to suggest they go home. “How is it that you own a Dior jacket?”

Clint relaxes minutely, then registers properly what she said and looks at her incredulously. “You can tell it’s Dior?”

Natasha gives him a slightly patronising look. “Of course I can tell it’s Dior. You remember the part where my uncle is essentially a real estate tycoon, right? Lots of fancy jackets.”

“Oh, yeah.” Clint stalls for a moment, trying to find a way to talk about this that doesn’t open a door into everything shittastic about his pre-Culver days. “Um, Kate bought it for me,” he settles for, because Kate is easily the best thing about his pre-Culver days.

“Kate bought you a Dior jacket?” Natasha asks, sounding surprised.

“Suit,” Clint says, embarrassed and uncomfortable, knowing this wasn’t really going to go the way he’d hoped.

“What?”

“She bought me a Dior suit.”

Natasha stares at him. “That jacket fits you like a glove. That’s a tailored jacket. Why did Kate buy you a tailored Dior suit? _How_ did Kate buy you a tailored Dior suit?”

Clint scrubs his hand over his face. “For her eighteenth birthday. Her dad is high up in Meredith – you know, the publishers? _Better Homes and Gardens_ and all that? – _really_ high up. He threw a thing for her birthday and she hated it so dragged me along. But I’m a schlep and needed scrubbing up. So: suit.”

“Schlep?”

Clint rolls his eyes, happy to continue deflecting. “Yes, I know. I use it wrong. You still know what I mean though.”

She looks at him then, searching, working out what to ask here, and how. She can probably see the ‘don’t push this’ vibes Clint’s throwing off in all directions, because she’s not an idiot and Clint’s anything but subtle. And Clint hopes – really, really hopes – that she just drops it, because he really, really doesn’t want to talk about it, _never_ wants to talk about it.

But she can’t know what’s connected and how and he knows that; it’s like a minefield, Clint’s history, and she doesn’t know and he can’t tell her, not yet. Not about his shitty childhood, or about his lack of money, or just how much he owes Kate Bishop and knows he can never pay back, not in any meaningful way. Not about the guilt, and the inadequacy, and the terrible fear of failing – his degree, Kate, his mother’s memory, his promises to himself. About the fear of forfeiting a debt he feels he owes a hospital in another state, within whose white walls was often the safest he felt in a childhood full of pain and isolation.

His whole life is a panicked feeling in his chest and a fear of failure so acute he has trouble sleeping sometimes, and right now he’s in a park with a beautiful woman and he doesn’t want a reminder of every debt he can never pay back.

Because sometimes she smiles like she’d help carry them and the hope is more terrifying than the long shadow of his father; alcohol-laced and promising violence.

“How did you meet Kate?” is not the question he was expecting but it is the question Natasha asks, and Clint could kiss her because he can answer that without lying and with minimum guilt.

“School,” he says, honest but with no elaboration, and Natasha gives him that look again, debating what to say.

In lieu of asking anything else though she ends up shuffling closer on the wall they’re leaning against, her whole side pressed up against his.

“Sorry,” she says softly.

“For what?” Clink asks, honestly surprised.

She sighs quietly, a small exhalation of breath, and tips her head against his shoulder.

“For asking,” she says. “For making you uncomfortable.” She juggles her jacket, freeing her hand and curling her fingers gently around his wrist. He doesn’t move – can’t – and they stay like that for long moments.

“For whatever happened,” she says eventually, her words soft and slightly muffled by his shoulder and the cotton of his t-shirt, Natasha having turned so her nose is pressed into his collarbone. The same collarbone she’d silently questioned about last night, the same collarbone that never set properly aged eight and that’s connected to everything he doesn’t want to talk about now. Just like his childhood, his body is a map of things he doesn’t want to talk about.

It’s lucky, he thinks, that he does an interesting degree, has interesting friends and an unusual hobby, else he wouldn’t have anything to talk about at all.

His hand grips hers back at those words and he turns his face into the crown of her head, closing his eyes against hope and remembered pain.

“It’s not your fault,” he says into her hair.

“I know,” she replies, easing herself out of his embrace to stand between his legs, never once letting go of his hand. “And somehow I don’t think it was yours either.”

Intellectually, Clint knows this. But knowing and believing are two very different things and he can’t bring himself to meet her gaze in case she can tell the difference. So they stay there, under a lamppost in the park, Natasha rubbing slow circles on the back of his hand until he can look her in the eye.

“C’mon,” she says, kissing him lightly on the mouth. “Take me back to mine. Maria is over from Quantico and I want you to meet her. And Yelena will be around too.”

“You’ve met mine, now turnabout’s fair play?”

“I’m sure you have more friends than just Kate and America but yeah, something like that.”

“You know,” Clint says, pushing off the wall and falling into step beside Natasha, their hands still linked, “to the best of my knowledge, on dates ‘come back to mine’ is not typically followed by ‘to meet my friends’.”

“Yes, well. Normally I don’t manage to kill the mood quite so dramatically, so I think we’re allowed to be a bit atypical.”

And Clint _has_ to kiss her for that, because _goddamn_ she’s all kinds of awesome.

“What was that for?” Natasha teases, poking him gently in the side once they pull apart.

“I – don’t know? You.” Clint fumbles, because he suddenly realises that he’s not initiated _anything_ between the two of them; it’s all been Natasha.

Natasha grins wide and happy, and grabs him ‘round the neck to pull him back to her mouth, kissing him so soundly that he swears he sees stars. When they pull apart Clint feels disorientated and a lot like he needs Natasha naked _now_. He manages to get his brain online enough to ask, “Mood lifted at all now?” in a hopeful and vaguely pathetic tone, giving Natasha his best ‘hit over the head with a brick’ expression, but Natasha just laughs brightly and tugs him along.

“Too late!” she says, fake peppy and _evil_. “You’ve agreed now.”

And Clint stumbles along in her wake, his protests of, “I agreed to nothing!” only making Natasha laugh more.

 

They make their way to Natasha’s on the back of Clint’s bike; Natasha on the seat calling directions and Clint pedalling and trying to focus on the road rather than her hands on his waist.

He succeeds. Well, mostly. They don’t crash anyhow.

 

“Это он?” is the first thing Clint hears as he enters the apartment Natasha shares with Yelena, another Russian who, as far as Clint can work out, is currently working in Culver’s financial department.

“Да,” comes Natasha’s reply as she removes her jacket, gesturing at Clint where he can dump his stuff.

“Он не так хорош, как ты говорила.”

Yelena, it turns out, is a tall, blonde, and somehow very _Russian_ looking woman currently lounging on the couch in front of an episode of _America’s Next Top Model_.

“У него отличная задница,” Natasha says shortly. “Also, English please.”

Yelena rolls her eyes and stands to kiss Clint European style, once on each cheek. “Yelena Belova,” she says. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Clint Barton, likewise,” Clint replies, a little taken aback. Yelena is clearly much classier than Kate and Em, seeing as their introduction to Natasha was yelling and jumping on his back. Well, Kate had already met her, but still.

“Yelena, where is Maria? You haven’t scared her away have you?”

“Not likely,” comes a voice from the direction of what Clint figures is the kitchen.

Clint turns to see a woman with the bearing of someone who would be _very_ good in a crisis and who is, apparently, not Yelena’s biggest fan, judging by the way the temperature in the room suddenly seems to drop.

“Maria,” Natasha says clearly used to the frostiness, “meet Clint Barton. He’s a med student here. Clint, Maria Hill. FBI wannabe.”

“Fuck you, Romanov,” Maria says immediately, but she’s smiling. She turns to Clint.

“So you’re the elusive Clint Barton, eh?” she says, grinning and walking over to shake his hand. “Good to put a face to the sexual frustration.”

Clint’s confused, “Huh?” and Natasha’s warning, “Maria,” come out at exactly the same time. Maria grins wider and elects to enlighten Clint.

“Oh, nothing much,” she says airily. “Just, you know, sharing a bed with someone isn’t conducive to the relief of sexual frustrations.”

“ _Maria_.”

Natasha is louder this time and Yelena is watching like this is the best thing to ever happen in her front room.

“What did you _do_ last night anyway?” Maria continues, smiling slyly and darting amused glances at Natasha, who looks half murderous and half embarrassed – a good look on her, Clint thinks. “I don’t think I’ve ever known Natasha to spend so long in the shower.”

The pieces start falling into place for Clint now, although in his defence he has never had an introduction to anyone’s friends go quite like this before. He’s underprepared, okay? Usually he’s quicker on the uptake.

“Also, she doesn’t play music either. Not usually.”

“Loudly,” Yelena chimes in, clearly deciding that siding with Maria is acceptable in this case. “At midnight.”

“ _Заткнись, Елена_ ,” Natasha snarls, and Clint would feel bad for her if this didn’t imply what it did.

“English please, Наталия,” Yelena replies grinning. “Honestly.”

There’s a small pause and, even though this is sort of embarrassing and Clint is really, _really_ trying not to grin like a loon, he manages to school his features into a semblance of innocence long enough to say, “Well, I didn’t spend much time in the shower _at all_ last night.”

Natasha’s eyes snap to his immediately, while Yelena whoops and Maria laughs and says loudly, “I like this one, Nat!”

And even though Clint’s basically just admitted to two strangers that last night he came faster than he’s ever done in his life in his shower thinking about Natasha he can’t _quite_ bring himself to care, because she’s bright eyed and flushed and staring at him in a way that makes him really wish there weren’t two other people in the room. Though if Natasha keeps looking at him like that those two other people aren’t going to be a hindrance much longer, and that is definitely _not_ the first impression Clint wants to make.

“I hate you,” Natasha mutters at Maria, tearing her gaze from Clint’s. “I hate you so fucking much.”

Maria shrugs casually. “No, you don’t.”

There’s another pause, in which Yelena clearly feels the excitement is over as she turns back to _America’s Next Top Model_. Clint looks from her, to Maria, and then to Natasha, and decides breaking the awkward tension in the room can be his job.

“Mood lifted at all now?” he asks, smiling slightly.

Natasha barks out a laugh. “You’re awful and I hate you all. Боже мой.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s true,” Clint says loftily and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Sit down and shut up, Barton,” Natasha says, heading for the kitchen, “and I might make you proper tea.”

“Tea?” Maria says incredulously, leaning up against the wall. “What kind of American male are you?”

“The kind that dated a Brit for almost a year,” Clint replies, moving over to sit on the other end of the couch to Yelena. “Sometimes I get a craving.”

“Huh,” Maria says speculatively, “anyone I know?”

“I dunno,” Clint says, waving his hand vaguely. “Jess? Jess Drew? Into genetics and stuff. Planning to do a Masters at Imperial in London at some point.”

“Friend of Carol Danvers?”

Clint looks up at her surprised. “Yeah, that’s the one. How’d you know Carol?”

“We took some modules together. She’s in the Air Force now.”

“Yeah, I know. Heard it’s going well.”

“Well?” Maria says laughing. “She’s whooping everyone’s ass. She’ll be flying before you know it.”

Clint grins. “That sounds like Carol.”

Maria laughs again and shakes her head as Natasha comes out of the kitchen carrying tea for the two of them and Coke for Maria. There’s a brief conversation in Russian between Yelena and Natasha after which Yelena shuts off the TV and busses Natasha on the cheek before turning to leave. She calls a goodbye to Clint over her shoulder and Clint just about manages to reply before she exits the room.

“Not to be lame or anything,” Natasha says as she sits next to Clint on the couch, “but I just saw the time. It’s half one, Clint.”

Clint groans and drops his head onto the back of the couch. “Ah, fuck.”

“Early start?” Maria asks sympathetically.

“All my starts are early starts.”

“Which definitely explains the sexual frustration,” she says grinning again.

“Is she always like this?” Clint asks, lifting his head from the back of the couch to look over at Natasha.

“No,” she replies shortly, her eyes narrowed in Maria’s direction. “The FBI has made her snarky and mean.”

Maria sticks her tongue out – a weirdly immature gesture on such a formidable looking woman – and then crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “You’d be too if you were only one of two women in Basic and all the men are jerks. Also, I was always snarky and mean, Nat. Don’t sell me short.”

“They can’t _all_ be jerks,” Clint says, feeling he should at least put in a token protest in defence of his gender, although he can well believe that they’re all jerks.

“Nah, there are a couple who are alright. I won’t be baking cookies with them any time soon, but they’re alright.”

Clint sips his tea. He doesn’t crave it very often, but every now and again it’s nice. Coffee is better though.

“The two of you whoop their asses, don’t you?” he asks Maria eventually.

Natasha and Maria both snort in a way that very clearly means ‘of-fucking-course’ and Clint grins.

Overall, a pretty good date, really.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint has to adult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lateness. I dumped 11k words on my beta on her birthday weekend by accident. And then I went on holiday.
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: discussion of the following; violence, childhood physical and emotional abuse, alcoholism, sexual assault, infidelity. Please look after yourself. If you need/want clarification, message me (franztastisch.livejournal.com).

Clint doesn’t see Natasha for the rest of the week. He practically sleepwalks through his Thursday shift at the hospital and crashes out that night on the couch at about half nine. Kate wakes him at just past midnight, after coming back from Em’s, and he stays awake just long enough to register that she’s ripping the shit out of him for being an old man, before collapsing into bed and sleeping straight through until his alarm at too-early-o’clock the next morning.

Clint Barton was not built to run on an average of four hours of sleep a night and he just wants to bury himself under blankets and not come out for at least two days.

But alas, there is work. And also Kate, who – instead of letting him pass out in front of the TV and dream of Natasha Romanov in silk shirts like the good friend she _should be_ – drags him out to a bar with Em, Teddy, Billy, and a bunch of their friends, citing his need to ‘get out more’ and completely ignoring his protests to the contrary. So instead of sleeping for fourteen hours solid, which was his original plan, he ends up crashing out at five on Saturday morning after half-heartedly playing minder to Kate and her drunk friends by virtue of being the only person not drinking. Which is ironic, considering he’s the only one legally old enough to do so.

He wakes up at two in the afternoon to three missed calls and a bunch of texts from Natasha asking why he didn’t come to the library. If he’s honest, he didn’t really expect her to maybe miss him as much as he was missing her, so he just stares at them for a moment in incomprehension before sending a brief apology because he doesn’t know what else to say. He then forces himself up and out to his local Seven Eleven in search of sustenance, where he bumps into Steve Rogers.

The thing with Steve is that Clint has spoken with him at The Bean Tree every Wednesday for the past seven months but, in spite of this, they’re not really friends. Steve knows his coffee order by heart and Clint knows Steve draws, but any further exchange of information is hampered by the fact that Steve is _working_ and Clint is forever doing refreshers, course catch-up, placement evaluations and whatnot. And they only ever see each other at there or at house parties they’re invited to by mutual friends.

Steve is Natasha’s friend though, and as a result, it’s clear that Steve feels he should make an effort to get to know the guy Natasha is… seeing. Dating? Seeing. Clint’s sticking with ‘seeing’. Which is _fine,_ only Steve is so nice and weirdly perky that Clint can’t really deal with him right now; bone-tired and sort of hungover on a Saturday afternoon.

Steve, bless him, can tell – or maybe Clint is just looking that rough – because they exchange pleasantries for about five minutes before Steve, who has been fighting a smile the whole time says, “Hey man, you look like you need about seven cups of coffee right now, but I really need to tell someone this. Just ‘cause it’s too funny not to.”

Steve laughs before trying to compose himself and failing rather spectacularly, and Clint raises his eye brow.

“Bucky got…” He laughs again. “Oh God, okay. We went out last night, right?”

Clint sort of hates him for that, because Steve looks more like he stepped out of the pages of GQ than someone who ‘went out last night’.

“And I lost Bucky around two-ish or something. But he always makes it home so I wasn’t worried and then I looked in on him this afternoon to check,” – and here Steve starts laughing again – “to check that he wasn’t, y’know, dead or whatever and” – pause for more laughter – “he’s got… he went to… I dunno, a twenty four hour tattoo place or something and got…”

And he’s trying so hard to keep talking, but he’s bright pink at the effort and Clint can do little else but grin at him.

“He got Patrick from SpongeBob tattooed on his arm!” Steve manages to choke out.

“ _What?_ ” Clint says, laughing incredulously at the idea of Bucky Barnes, with his stupid ripped jeans and cocky smirk, sporting a bright pink starfish in trunks on his arm.

“Yeah, I know! And even better, he _hates_ SpongeBob! And he probably can’t do anything about it until it’s healed and _he has no idea yet_. He was still asleep when I left.”

Steve is almost manic with glee, something Clint _completely_ understands. It’s like if Kate had woken up to find she’d tattooed Mermaid Barbie on her arm. Clint would _rip the shit_ out of her.

“Oh God,” Clint says, now laughing almost as hard as Steve. “That’s _gold_. I can’t wait to see that.”

“I know, right?” Steve says, grinning maniacally. “Anyway, I’d better shoot. I want to be there when he wakes up.”

Apparently, Steve Rogers is a little bit evil. Clint likes him more for that.

Steve turns to leave but, just before exiting, he turns and yells “Barton!” over the heads of some very hungover freshmen, who glare at him. He then rattles off a string of numbers that Clint only remembers because remembering numbers is an important life skill in a medical profession.

“Call me!” he yells, miming a phone with his hand. And Clint is feeling obnoxious, so he replies with, “Will do, honey!” and blows him a kiss. The freshmen stare at him, before whispering among themselves.

Steve looks surprised, then smiles and flips him the bird before leaving.

 

When Clint gets home he blitzes a ready meal in the microwave, too lazy to cook, before deciding that he needs to see Bucky’s stupid tattoo for himself. So he calls Steve.

“Hey honey,” he drawls, as soon as the line connects.

“Who is this?” comes Steve’s reply.

“Aww, are you saying you’ve forgotten me already, Steve? I’m hurt.”

“Clint?”

“Got it in one,” Clint replies, moving to sit on the couch. “So, are you going to send me a photo of this tattoo or am I going to have to make more polite conversation?”

Steve barks a laugh down the phone, then says, “Hold on,” and hangs up.

A minute later Clint’s phone buzzes and he opens the text to find a photo of Bucky Barnes, looking hungover as fuck, buried in a duvet and blankets with Patrick from SpongeBob inexpertly tattooed on his left deltoid.

Clint cracks up laughing.

[Wow.] he texts back.

 _[Pretty good eh?]_ Steve replies almost immediately.

 _[Not sure the tat artist had even *seen* SpongeBob, based on that.]_ and then, _[Or else Bucky just didn’t sit still enough.]_

[Which is more likely?] Clint shoots back, busy shovelling microwavable lasagne into his mouth, only to spit it out two seconds late. Shit that’s hot.

_[Bucky only sits still for comics.]_

Which makes sense; Bucky, the few times Clint has met him, has been a ball of energy. The only time Clint saw him stand still for more than two minutes was when someone insisted that some guy was the best thing to happen to comics _ever_ and Bucky sat them down to explain why they were _very clearly wrong_.

[It’s very… pink.] he texts back, because it _is_. Clint really can’t see how you could salvage a tattoo that terrible. Though Clint figures that if anyone can pull it off, it would be Bucky. He has a slight James Dean vibe that Clint sort of envies.

 _[Suits him.]_ Steve replies immediately, and Clint can almost hear the years of friendship behind that comment.

 _[Christ, I could have done better.]_ Steve sends almost immediately after. Then: _[Added a moustache or something.]_

Clint snorts. [On Patrick or Bucky?]

 _[Either.]_ comes the reply.

_[Both.]_

_[Hold on.]_

Clint waits a moment or two, shovelling marginally cooler lasagne into his mouth, before his phone buzzes again. This time Bucky has a Salvador Dali-esque moustache in black sharpie drawn on his upper lip. Steve is _sneaky_. Clint loves that Steve and Bucky’s relationship is similar in many ways to his and Kate’s.

He’s just about to reply when Natasha calls – the contact photo a sneaky candid taken while pretending to text Kate, showing Natasha studying in The Bean Tree, pen in mouth, hair in a messy bun, and wearing a t-shirt that says _The Library: A Great Place to Get Checked Out!_ – and Clint feels no guilt about ditching Steve for her.

“Heya darlin’,” he drawls as soon as he picks up, but the voice on the other end is not Natasha.

“I’m leaving tonight,” it says, and Clint has a vague feeling that he should know who this is, even if it _should_ be Natasha.

“Huh?” says Clint, rather stupidly. “Who is – ?”

“It’s Maria. Natasha is in the shower,” says the voice before Clint can finish the question and Clint is silent, brain scrabbling to make the connection while simultaneously trying to not think too hard about Natasha naked in the shower.

“Maria Hill,” the voice continues, when Clint’s been silent a little too long. “Natasha’s friend. We met on Wednesday night?” and Clint can hear the eye roll.

“Oh, yeah. Um… okay?” he says, nonplussed. “And you’re calling me why?”

Maria sighs, her breath sounding weird and distorted down the phone.

“I’m leaving tonight – in about an hour in fact – and Yelena has found a new boytoy.”

“Okay…?”

“Clint,” she says admonishingly, and Clint wonders how someone who’s only met him once can sound so utterly done with him, “Natasha is the only one home tonight.”

And suddenly he gets it.

“Is this some kind of weird booty-call-by-proxy?”

“No,” Maria says patiently. “This is my thank you present to Natasha for letting me share her bed for five nights rather than making me sleep on possibly the most uncomfortable couch known to man.”

“Oh I bet I know a more uncomfortable couch,” Clint says vaguely, thinking of the monstrosity that currently resides in Billy and Teddy’s front room.

“Not the point,” Maria says briskly. “The point is that I am giving you information that can be used to yours and Natasha’s _mutual benefit_ , so I suggest you act on it.”

Clint hears very little suggestion in her voice.

“Well, I can see why the FBI picked _you_ up,” Clint comments, instead of dwelling on the emphasis on ‘mutual benefit’.

“Oh?” Maria says, sounding amused.

“I have never heard something phrased as a suggestion sound less like a suggestion. Suddenly I feel sorry for all those jerk guys in Basic.”

“No, you don’t. And it sounds to me like you’re turning down an opportunity to sleep with Natasha Romanov,” Maria says impishly.

“Sounds to me like you’re pimping your friend out,” Clint shoots back with a grin. “And I thought this wasn’t a booty call?”

Maria laughs at that. “I like you, Barton.”

“Well, I think you’re mildly terrifying,” Clint replies.

“That I am,” Maria says, totally unapologetic. “And I do think you should come over tonight. I think she’s planning to watch _The Return of the King_.”

“Well, now I’m sold,” Clint says teasingly.

“Good,” Maria says, sounding pleased. “Oh, and the shower has stopped, I’ve got to go. But Barton?”

“Yeah?”

“It was good to meet you.”

“You too,” Clint says surprised, just before the call disconnects.

Clint stares at his phone for a moment, wondering what just happened, and sees he has another text from Steve – _[Fuck’s sake. Bucky sleeps like the dead.]_ – and for a moment Clint has to really think as to what that pertains to.

[Chuck water at him. For rehydration purposes.] he sends back as a joke. He then resumes eating his (now almost cold) lasagne, wondering what to do with his newly acquired information.

 

Clint decides to postpone his decision by having a shower. When he gets out fifteen minutes later he finds a ten second video on his phone of water flying at a still sleeping and now-moustachioed Bucky, who yells and flails and then groans loudly. Clint assumes that’s the hangover hitting, especially as he can hear Steve laughing in the background. Clint almost falls over he’s laughing so hard and he only just manages to text back [DUDE. IT WAS A JOKE.] before doubling over again.

He then lets his good mood carry him out of the house.

 

Clint gets a little lost on his way to Natasha’s, first having to go to Smokey Joe’s just to have a vague idea of what direction he should actually be heading in. And then he finds a park he doesn’t remember and spends ten minutes cycling in circles before he recognises anything. But he gets there eventually and, tying his bike to the conveniently placed lamppost just outside her apartment, he has a brief moment of doubt before thinking _fuck it_ and pressing the buzzer.

Natasha is wearing fuzzy penguin pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt with Cyrillic lettering on it. Her hair is in a damp bun and she looks soft, small, beautiful, and, right now, pleasantly surprised.

For a moment Clint can’t think of a single thing past the idea that, for some reason, she willingly wants to spend time with him.

“Hi,” he manages, complete with dorky wave.

“Hi,” she replies, her hand on the doorframe and a small smile on her lips. “What brings you here?”

Again, Clint’s mind goes blank. He doesn’t really feel Maria’s faux booty call should be mentioned, but his other answer – ‘you’ – seems a little too forward right now.

He really should have thought up a reason beforehand.

“I – uh.” Option one it is then. “Maria said no one else would be here and you’d be… watching The Return of the King?”

Natasha just stares at him, looking confused.

“Um… yeah.” Clint shuffles his feet, his hand creeping up to the back of his neck. “It was weird. She’s kinda scary.” And when Natasha still doesn’t say anything, he continues with “Yeah I… um. I could have maybe had a better reason.”

“Maria…?” Natasha says softly, confusion evident in her tone. “Wait,” she then says, smile stronger now. “Shouldn’t ‘I wanted to see you’ be reason enough? The Bean Tree definitely isn’t _my_ local café, you know.”

Clint barks out laugh at that. “If that were my reason I’d never leave your house,” he says, totally honest.

The implication of what she actually said registers just as her eyebrows shoot up.

“Wait, what?” Clint says but Natasha only grinds out something low and heated in Russian and pulls him into the house by the front of his t-shirt.

Clint’s back hits the door as it slams shut but he only manages the briefest hiss of pain before Natasha is kissing him breathless, hands everywhere. It takes him less than a second to get with the programme, one hand sinking into her damp hair while the other pulls her closer.

“Fuck, Tasha,” he pants, not even noticing the nickname slipping out.

She smiles against his mouth.

“You like that?” she asks slyly, but before he can say anything, she grazes his earlobe with her teeth so instead of replying he can only manage a small moan.

“You know,” he gets out between kisses. “You know, I – ah! Fuck. I wasn’t – Christ Tasha! We don’t – ohmygod – don’t have to – “

“‘Don’t have to’ what, солнышко?” Natasha asks mischievously, pulling away from him slightly and making Clint suddenly aware of how tightly they’d been wedged together.

Clint whines quietly at the loss of contact and Natasha smirks up at him.

“This wasn’t, um, necessarily, a booty call,” Clint manages with difficulty as Natasha’s hands wander – one stroking his jaw and the other toying _just_ inside his waistband.

“Maybe I want it to be,” Natasha murmurs, pushing his t-shirt up, but she must see something in his expression – some of the weird, wondrous surprise – because she frowns and Clint tenses.

“You have somehow got it into your head that you want this more than I do. Which,” she says lowly, stepping away and pulling off her t-shirt to reveal a utilitarian black bra that is sexier than it has any right to be, “I can assure you is not the case.”

She puts her hands on her hips, stupidly gorgeous in penguin PJs pants and a bra, and looking at Clint like… well, much like he’s probably looking at her; hungry and wanting and desperate to get hands on skin as soon as possible.

They’re locked in a staring match, the air between them getting thicker and thicker, and Clint can’t really think past the want and the buzzing in his ears. But Natasha, under the heat in her gaze, looks like she’s waiting for something and Clint remembers something about ‘want’ and ‘promise you’ so he says, hoarse and distant to his own ears, “Okay.”

And Natasha says, “Good,” low and hot and feral sounding, and drags him by his belt loops into her room.

 

It turns out that sleeping with Natasha Romanov is just as amazing as Clint thought it would be – and of course he’s thought about it; you can’t hang out with her without thinking about it at least once. She’s like a force of nature and he’s just helplessly caught up in her movements; push and pull and skin and she kisses like she means it, like it’s important, and Clint is drowning in the honesty of it.

Afterwards, he realises he doesn’t know where his clothes are – he stopped paying attention to anything other than her when she removed her PJ pants – and he sure as hell isn’t getting out of bed to find them. Not when she’s wrapped around him and their total sum of clothes is precisely zero. That would be stupid.

Natasha tightens her hand around the curve of his ribs and tilts her head so her nose is pressed into the underside of his jaw.

“You want to watch _The Return of the King_ now?” she murmurs, her breath damp on his neck as he shuffles just enough to get his hearing aids out. Sleeping in them is super uncomfortable.

“Would it involve moving?”

“Mmm, yes.”

Her voice is low, more vibrations through his chest than anything he actually hears, but he understands anyway. Clint tightens his grip and shuffles them even closer to each other.

“Then no,” he says. “I’m good here.”

“Mmm, good choice,” she whispers, and they both drift off.

 

They are woken about two hours later by the loud, obnoxious ringtone Kate set as her own on Clint’s phone. Clint just groans, but Natasha actually jumps, muttering something unpleasant sounding in Russian, which makes Clint laugh.

Natasha smacks him lightly on his chest for that before saying, “Answer your damn phone, Barton,” and turning over, taking most of the covers with her.

Clint’s pants are closer than he’d initially thought, and he only has to lean half out of Natasha’s bed to answer his phone.

“What?” he grunts when he picks up.

“Where the fuck are you?” Kate demands, just about loud enough for him to hear. “Indiana Jones is on.”

Clint groans. “You seriously woke me up for that?”

“Of course I did! Wait. What do you mean, ‘woke’? You’re not in your room.” Kate suddenly gasps, probably more dramatically than the situation warrants. “Ohmygod. Are you at Natasha’s?”

“Kate – “

“Oh my God, you are,” and she sounds so damn gleeful. “So proud, Hawkeye. So proud.”

“Oh my God, Kate,” Clint mimics, “shut up.”

Kate laughs. “I hope you used protec – !”

Clint hangs up, throwing his arm dramatically across his eyes.

“Indiana Jones is on and apparently Kate is proud of me,” he says, slightly muffled.

Natasha laughs and turns back over to face him. “Oh yeah?” she asks, sounding weird and indistinct. “For what?”

Clint doesn’t answer and Natasha nudges his arm off his face, propping herself up on his chest.

“No really, солнышко,” she says softly, “for what?”

Clint’s lucky Natasha is as close as she is, or lease he wouldn’t be able to hear her. The volume on his phone is loud for a reason, after all.

He smiles, slightly embarrassed, and avoids her eyes. “For sleeping with the ‘hottest woman who isn’t Em’ I guess,” he says, the quotation marks traced into her sides. “Her words, not mine.”

Natasha looks at him quietly for a moment, a small smile playing around her mouth. She then brings her hand up to his face and traces along his mouth, his cheekbones, his eyelids.

“And what are your words?” she asks quietly.

And Clint can’t answer. He just stares at her; her weird, crooked half smile and the little mole on her cheek. Half the words in his head are gibberish and half are too honest or too soon. He feels like his heart is twice the size it should be and it’s blocking his throat. So instead he wraps his arms around her and buries his face in the curve of her neck, rolling them over until they’re so tangled up they might never come apart.

And eventually the feeling passes and he can get words out.

“I’m the luckiest fucker alive,” he says quietly, against her collarbone, “and I don’t think my words are good enough.”

 

Some hours later Clint is sat up in Natasha’s bed, boxers on and morning sunlight streaming through the window, watching Natasha get dressed. Or he was, up until Steve sent him another hilarious photo of Bucky and his shitty tattoo, Bucky still looking a bit rough and flipping the bird at the camera.

“Hey, Nat,” Clint says, laughing slightly and looking down at his phone. “You gotta see this.”

 “What?”

“Bucky Barnes got drunk and got a tattoo of Patrick from SpongeBob on his arm.”

“What?!”

Clint laughs as she rushes over, only half dressed, to peer down at his phone. “Yeah, it’s pretty hilarious.”

He holds out his phone to her and she snatches it up, flicking though the photos Steve sent him and landing on the video.

“Боже мой,” she says, laughing and looking like Christmas has come early. “I am going to mock him so much.”

 

Clint doesn’t really have a summer holiday so much as a time when he does different work than usual. He gets a scholarship – being in the system at least comes with _some_ benefits – but it only really covers term-time, no matter how he stretches his money. So, instead of working on coursework in the library, over the summer Clint works at Willowdale’s only bicycle repair shop for a surly Canadian called Logan who likes motorbikes, cigars, and not much else.

Not that it was a bicycle repair shop when Clint started there; Logan had just fixed motorbikes until Clint turned up and told him that he could fix pedal bikes so how hard could the motorised version be? Logan had called him an idiot, then said that if he could fix that one pedal bike that had been sat in the back for ages, he was hired and could fix ‘stupid pushbikes’ to his heart’s content – which turned out to be all summer and the odd weekend when Logan needed something done. Logan also ended up teaching him the basics of motorbike maintenance, as it turns out non-motorised bikes are only slightly less niche in Willowdale than they are in Des Moines.

Clint had entertained the idea that having Natasha around would change his summer plans – Jess hadn’t, as she’d gone back to London for the majority of the summer they’d dated – but in mid-June she’s tells him that she’s managed to get an internship doing something language related for some government department, followed by another internship at the French Embassy, which means that she’ll be spending the majority of her summer in DC. It isn’t Des Moines, where Kate will be, or Las Cruces where Em will be (and by August, Kate too, because prying those two apart is apparently impossible) or London, where Jess had fucked off to (uncharitable, Clint knows, but London is _far_ ) but it wasn’t Willowdale, so Clint can’t say he’s all that pleased.

(Apart from he _is_ , because both these internships are great for Natasha and, along with her tutoring and her translating, will look great on her resume. Plus she’s really excited and she looks so fucking beautiful when she’s excited.)

So Clint’s going to spend his summer alone in a bike shop in Willowdale. Well, not _alone_ alone, because Steve lives with Bucky on Twickenham Street and neither are going back to New York (something to do with dead parents and living grandparents and Clint just doesn’t ask).

So not _alone_ alone, but what feels like alone enough.

Or maybe not.

 

“Barton!” yells Logan around his cigar as he comes into the garage from the shop floor (and aren’t there rules about smoking indoors?), “Customer here for you!”

Clint wipes grease off onto his ‘work’ jeans, before untangling himself from the bike he’s currently fixing. It’s not that unusual for people to ask for him; Logan knows fuck all about bicycles and that Peter kid knocks his bike around more than is necessary for a newspaper photographer. It’s probably him, actually.

It’s not him.

“Hi,” says Jess, waving kind of dorkily at him from the counter. “Long time no see.”

Clint gapes at her.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks, not exactly rudely but… well, she’s supposed to be in London, and anyway they’d ended the opposite of well.

“I mean, hi!” Clint amends when Jess looks uncomfortable. He then frowns. “Question still stands though. Shouldn’t you be in London?”

Jess continues to look uncomfortable, which throws Clint even more because Jess was always so sure of herself: confident and loud. It’s what attracted Clint to her in the first place. Confident women are kind of his thing.

“I came to visit Carol.”

She won’t meet his eyes, but Clint figures she’s not lying because of course Jess would come over to visit Carol. Apart from…

“It’s she in Alabama though?”

“And Monica,” Jess adds defensively.

“But Monica went back New Orleans to be a coast guard or something,” Clint says, confused.

Jess’ awkwardness quickly fades in the wake of Clint’s incomprehension. She sighs, sounding annoyed now.

“Oh for fuck’s sake Clint, I wanted to apologise,” she snaps. Jess never really liked explaining herself, especially when she thought whatever it was was blatantly obvious.

“For what?” Clint asks. “You weren’t the one who slept with someone else.”

Jess looks briefly angry before frowning and sighing again.

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “But I’m fifty per cent the reason it happened and you wear guilt like a blanket. So congratulations! A year later and we’re going to talk like adults rather than you becoming a workaholic and me running away to another country.”

Clint feels panicky, because he hates talking – the adult kind of talking – because it always involves feelings and those feeling are mostly of the ‘Clint you’re a moron’ variety. Or, in this case, ‘Clint you’re a moron and not only did you fuck up your relationship, you also lost a good friend and then a bunch of other good friends because that’s what happens when your girlfriends friend’s turn out to be both awesome and loyal’.

So yeah, Clint would rather blame himself and be done with it. At least that way doesn’t involve talking.

Clint sighs and scrubs his hand through his hair.

“Who let us become adults anyway?” he asks. “Someone should look into that.”

Jess gives him a small smile and it comforts him to see that she looks about as comfortable at the prospect of talking as he is.

“Yeah,” she says. “Responsible adults we are not.”

“And yet you decided to come all the way back to Virginia so we could sort our shit out. Seems pretty adult to me.”

Clint gives her a crooked smile and Jess shrugs.

“Well, I’m not currently tied to a degree. Or a job. So I can. And it’s not like you were going to do it.”

Clint shrugs at that. She’s not wrong.

“Besides,” she continues, “before we were a borderline disastrous couple, you were one of my best friends. I’ve missed you, you dick.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, smiling again and shuffling slightly. “Me too.”

And he has. Jess had been one of the few friends that had been his rather than someone else’s first. Most of his friends he gets to know through other people but Jess he’d met in a tutorial meet-and-greet type thing put on by the medical department so you could find students in the years above whose brains you could pick come finals. Clint picked Jess which turned out stellar for him.

So Jess was _his_ friend. The only other friends of his like that are Kate (duh) and Thor. And Maya from DeafSoc he guesses, but they’re not the type of friends to just hang out.

“When are you done here?” Jess asks eventually.

“Around about…” Clint looks at his phone. “Now,” he says. “Give me two secs.”

He disappears into the garage area, where Logan has disassembled someone’s Harley to tinker around with the engine, a cigar clamped between his teeth. He looks absurdly seventies somehow.

Clint sighs and scrubs his hand though his hair again before moving to put away his stuff.

“So who’s the girl?” Logan asks around his cigar.

“Ex,” Clint replies shortly, not wanting to talk about it, especially not with Logan.

“So you dated a Brit,” Logan muses, like Jess’ nationality explains a great deal about the situation.

“And you’ve dated a bunch of women, none of whom were Canadian,” Clint says. “Why’s it important?”

“Never dated a Brit,” Logan replies, completely ignoring the ‘shut the fuck up’ vibes Clint is throwing off left, right, and centre.

“Well, you can always try, but I don’t think you’re her type.”

“How so?”

“You’re a dick,” Clint says. “She’d probably want to stab you with a fork. I know I do.”

“And yet you keep turning up,” Logan says, eyebrow raised and expression knowing, and Clint would want to punch him if he wasn’t so pissed and apprehensive. It’s a feeling he gets a lot around Logan.

“You pay me,” Clint points out. “And no, I don’t think she’d take kindly to offers of payment,” he continues, before a smirking Logan can do more than open his mouth.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” he replies, but he’s grinning around his cigar. Logan is such a dick.

“Yeah,” says Clint, rolling his eyes. “Sure you weren’t.”

Logan takes his cigar out of his mouth so he can laugh at Clint. Fucker.

“Hey, I was only messing with you bub,” he says, packing up his own stuff.

Clint grabs his bag and walks to the door.

“I know,” he says. “It’s why you’re a dick. See you tomorrow, boss.”

Logan waves him away, cigar smoke trailing behind his hand.

“Get out of here, Barton.”

 

Jess is waiting just outside the door in a patch of sunlight that slants its way between the buildings on the other side of the road. She’s wearing Aviators, has her hair in a ponytail, and her legs are long, bare, and stretched out in front of her.

Clint looks at her hands and remembers why they got together, then looks at her jaw and remembers how they split up.

“Hi,” he says as he approaches with his bike.

She turns towards him.

“I’ve missed Virginia summers,” she says. “British summers are like this, but only half the time. The other half is grey and humid and you wonder if you should take an umbrella with you just in case.”

Clint smiles. “Sounds like fun.”

They stand awkwardly for a moment before Clint decides it’s his turn to be the adult.

“Okay, so… where do you want to do this? We can go to mine, Kate and Em aren’t there. Or we can find,” – Clint flounders for a moment – “neutral territory,” he settles on. “Or something.”

Jess looks confused. “Em?” she asks.

“America,” Clint elaborates. “Kate’s girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Jess echoes, Clint’s explanation clearly clearing nothing up.

“Um, yeah,” he says confused. “Kate’s bi. You didn’t know that?”

“No,” Jess says, drawing the word out in such a way as to indicate both that something was falling into place and it was something she thought Clint really should have told her earlier.

And there, in a nutshell, was why they’d broken up, although to be fair, Clint had thought Kate would have told her.

“Okay,” Clint says after a moment. “Not mine then. Landsdowne?”

There’s a pause before Jess replies, “Landsdowne is fine.”

“Walk? Or,” Clint gestures to his bike, “you want a lift?”

Clint hopes she says no. The last person her gave a lift to was… Actually it was Kate, but he’s never slept with Kate. So.

“Walk,” Jess says quickly, and Clint figures she must think it would be awkward too.

 

Landsdowne Park is Willowdale’s largest park that isn’t owned by Culver. All things considered it’s a pretty nice park; the student population of Willowdale is high enough to ensure it’s pretty low on hobos and alcoholics and it’s close enough to Logan’s bike shop to make walking a reasonable option. It wouldn’t have been Clint’s first choice of ‘neutral territory’ – too many chances to be overheard. ‘Talks’ between Clint and Jess, the few times they occurred, tended to result in yelling. But as most people’s idea of neutral territory is a bar or something similar, it would have to do. Clint doesn’t like the smell of bars – stale alcohol, cigarette smoke and violence – and will only go into them if he’s sufficiently distracted by a) friends b) pretty girls and/or c) really loud and cheesy 90s hits.

Clint dumps his bike under a rather grand looking oak tree whilst Jess sits down with her back against the trunk.

“So, how long has Kate been bi?” Jess asks, once she’s settled and it’s become clear that Clint is going to stand around looking uncomfortable for a while yet.

“All her life,” Clint says, not meeting her eyes and instead fixing his gaze on his bike and its dodgy second gear. He needs to sort that out soon.

He doesn’t see Jess roll her eyes, but he can hear it. “Obviously, I mean how long have you known?”

Clint frowns and looks down at her then. “Since she was thirteen, why?”

Clint decides that he should probably sit down now. Impending arguments aren’t made better by height differences.

Jess looks pissed already as Clint eases himself onto the grass.

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“It’s not my thing to tell,” he replies.

“Well what is your thing to tell?” Jess responds angrily. And wow, this deteriorated fast.

“What do you mean?” Clint draws it out, low, because he knows where this is going and _no_.

“I can ask you bloody anything and you never fucking answer!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, not this again!” Clint exclaims and makes to stand up.

“Oh no, you’re not getting out of this now,” Jess says furiously, grabbing his wrist. “You never answer anything. You evade and evade and it drives me up the wall.”

Clint tries to wrench his hand from hers, but she’s surprisingly strong and has the advantage of gravity and being able to pull down. “Well maybe there’s a fucking reason for that, Jess!” Clint growls once he’s resigned himself to not getting free. “Not everyone’s life is fucking sunshine and roses!”

“You’re whole life can’t have been shitty, Clint. You don’t share _anything_.”

“Kate!” Clint grinds out. “Kate is the best thing about my childhood and you’ve met her so what more is there to add?”

“And you didn’t even tell me she was bi!”

“Because that’s not my place. _Jesus_. Will you drop it?”

“Fucking no! This is me trying to work this out, you don’t get to shut it down now.”

“This isn’t you trying to work anything out,” Clint yells, not really caring that they’re in a public place and people could very possibly be overhearing everything. She still hasn’t let go of his wrist, and her nails are starting to dig into his skin. “This is you not dropping the one fucking thing I’ve ever repeatedly asked you to drop! The problem here isn’t me not telling, it’s you not fucking letting go.” He wrenches his hand from hers pointedly and glares down at her.

“Bullshit,” Jess spits out, scrambling to her feet, “This is as much you as it is me.”

Clint gets the swift and overwhelming urge to punch her and he deliberately relaxes his hands to resist, though he doesn’t really think it’ll work all that well if he stays much longer.

“Yeah, maybe, but you’re the one not leaving well enough alone.”

Jess rolls her eyes. “For fuck’s sake – !”

“You really fucking want to know?” Clint snarls, his temper snapping. He’s advancing on her now, forcing her to back up to the tree truck. Distantly he knows this is not good, that he should calm down and step back, but he’s so fucking angry. No one manages to push his buttons quite like Jess. And vice versa probably, but _fuck_. “You really want to know? My dad was a fucking abusive alcoholic who beat the shit out of me, my brother, and my mom.  Who hospitalised me numerous times and cost me my hearing, before getting so fucking pissed he killed himself and my mom by driving into a tree when I was twelve. Thanks to him I have a hearing impairment and a tendency towards alcoholism I only discovered aged _fourteen_ when I realised I was slowing _killing myself_.”

He’s about two inches from her face now and she’s pressed against the trunk of the tree, looking shocked and guilty and a hundred other emotions that make Clint think _good_ before his brain works its way out of his angry haze and he realises he’s probably scaring her.

Clint blows a harsh breath out through his nose and makes a conscious effort to relax, then takes two steps away from her.

“Your problem,” he says then, low and still angry, but much calmer, “is that you don’t trust people enough to believe they’re not hiding something. And I don’t fucking know why that is but I never asked because I fucking know what it’s like to not want to bring something up. And that’s fucking _fine_ apart from when you’re in a relationship with someone who really doesn’t want to talk about something. Then you push and push until something snaps.”

He looks up at her then. She’s still stood pushed back against the tree looking upset and guilty and Clint would feel bad about that if he could feel anything that wasn’t anger and the bitter rush of adrenaline.

“So congratulations!” He says, mimicking her tone from earlier. “We snapped. Twice.”

Clint picks up his bike and cycles furiously away.

 

He’s still too angry when he gets home to settle to anything. He briefly debates texting Kate, but then he’d have to explain and all that and he doesn’t want to rehash it yet. He thinks about calling Natasha, but doesn’t really know what he’d say to her. She doesn’t know anything of Jess or of his past, and while he can actually imagine telling her one day (soon, probably, which is terrifying in a completely different way) he never ever wants to do it over the phone.

He doesn’t feel like cooking, or watching TV, or anything like that and, unlike most other guys his age, he has absolutely no desire to go to a bar and drink himself into oblivion. But he’s too keyed up to go to bed or just sit and the archery range will be closed now, so in the end he goes for the only other option he can think of.

He texts Thor.

Clint met Thor in his first year at Culver when he needed a spotter for lifting weights. Clint’d a little more time on his hands then, and enjoyed occasionally beating the shit out of punching bags or lifting weights in his local gym – the same gym, in fact, that Em now has boxing classes in. It’s mostly frequented by students from either Culver or Willowdale Community College, so Thor had stood out rather alarmingly the first time Clint had seen him there.

Thor is large, blond and can come across as a bit dumb but _is not_. He used to work in a hospital in Norway until he fell for an American astrophysicist working at the local university and followed her back to the States, but now he works as a paramedic for the Cassandra Lang Memorial Hospital in Willowdale where Clint does all his clinic rotations.

Thor is also funny, kind and always willing to listen, and his (now) wife Jane is incredibly sweet and terrifyingly smart. Clint likes going round to their house because Jane talks excitedly with her hands, Thor sometimes has skillingsboller and because, for all that the pair are loud and slightly scatter-brained, they’ve mostly got their shit together. It gives Clint hope.

Clint’s text gets the reply pretty quickly and he hastily throws some sweatpants into a bag while being pathetically grateful that Thor isn’t working tonight. Clint would never tell him, but he thinks of Thor a little like an older brother – or, another, _better_ , older brother considering that he has actually has one, only _he’s_ currently behind bars in Detroit – and Clint sometimes needs him around just to feel less alone. Not that Kate doesn’t do that, because she does, so much, and Clint is even more pathetically grateful for her existence than Thor’s, but her default way of dealing is talking and sometimes Clint wants to _not_.

 

Clint meets Thor outside the gym and true to form, Thor doesn’t ask anything about Clint’s sudden need to punch things, and takes his muttered ‘fine’ when asked how he is without complaint. Thor then simply steadies the punching bag he chooses and says nothing as Clint punches his way into exhaustion, which takes less time than he anticipated. His anger has burnt though a lot of his energy already and he finds that he hasn’t much left over.

This was more about not thinking anyway.

Once Clint has reached the point where he feels he can hardly stand up anymore, he retreats to the weight benches and sits down – the gym is empty by this point so it’s not like he’s hogging anything – and stares at his hands. Thor, bless him, puts away the equipment before sitting down beside him.

They are silent for a good five minutes before Thor speaks.

“Feel better?” he asks.

“Tired,” Clint says, not really answering the question.

Thor nods and starts unwinding the tape from his hands.

“When was the last time you ate?” he asks as he takes his hair out of its ponytail. Thor makes ponytails look manly; Clint is in awe.

Clint thinks for a moment. “Around twelve,” he says.

Thor stands up. “Okay then. Shower, change and meet me out front. Jane and I were planning pizza tonight.”

Clint jerks his head up. “What?”

“Shower,” Thor says, hand out to pull Clint up.

“But – “

“If I let you go home now,” Thor says, “you will not eat. And pizza is easy.”

He hauls Clint to his feet and Clint notices that he hasn’t removed the tape from his hands.

“Besides,” Thor adds with a smile, “you haven’t been over for a while and Jane has a book she thinks you’ll like.”

Clint caves pretty quickly after that; pizza, company, and a book? A winning combination. Jane has excellent taste in sci-fi.

Thor and Jane live north of the main Culver campus, which means that they’re about as far away from Clint’s house as you can be and still claim to live in Willowdale, and they get there by means of Thor’s horrifically old and beat up Chevy pick-up truck with Clint’s bike on the flatbed.

Jane shows no surprise at Clint’s appearance and talks a mile a minute about the books she wants to lend him before suddenly remembering to order pizza, which they eat sitting on the couch while Thor shares stories of the unfortunate people who have ended up in the back of his ambulance. This is followed by stories about Jane’s co-workers, Jane’s research, and Jane’s new intern, all of which are much more hilarious than astrophysicist stories have any right to be.

Neither of them ask about his day or why he suddenly needed to punch the crap out of things in the gym, something Clint is incredibly grateful for, and Clint gets a lift home from Thor close to midnight feeling infinitely better than he has at any point since Jess had shown up at Logan’s.

 

Just before he goes to bed Clint checks his phone, which he had left in the front room when he’d gone to the gym. He has five messages and a missed call.

Kate has texted him a photo of her and Em in a hammock in the glorious New Mexico sunshine and the question _[What was the name of the Corner Shop Guy?]_

Ben Picante. He was Ben Picante and he was a douchebag. Clint fires a text back saying exactly that.

Em has texted _[TEQUILA!]_ which is… pretty self-explanatory, really.

The missed call is from Natasha, as is a text saying _[Sorry I missed you yesterday. Stupid embassy thing that was boring and pointless. And now you’ve missed me! Hope you’re having fun. Miss you and speak to you tomorrow xxx]_.

Clint debates explaining but instead settles for [Was at Thor and Jane’s. Sorry. Call you tomorrow after work xxx] and leaves it at that. Explaining over text is even worse than over the phone.

The last text is from Jess; it was sent about two hours after he left her in the park and simply says _[I’m sorry.]_

Clint doesn’t know what to say to that – ‘it’s okay’ being a blatant lie – so he doesn’t say anything.

He dreams of Des Moines that night and it knocks him so off kilter that he calls Kate in his lunch break the next day. He then decides, in an uncharacteristic show of adultness (prompted by Kate, of course) to sort this thing with Jess out soon, or it’ll just bother him for the rest of the summer.

‘Soon’ does not mean ‘today’ though.

 

When he calls Natasha that evening they talk about the ‘stupid embassy thing’ and how her internship is going. Apparently she’s been hit on by four separate Frenchmen already and all the other women she works with are impressed by her ability to turn them down without them getting even remotely offended, which sets Clint off on a rambling rant about Frenchmen and guys feeling entitled to women’s affections and winds up with him retelling some stand-up comedian’s joke about colonialism. Natasha makes him stupid.

They talk for almost two hours, and it’s only when they hang up that Clint realises that he hasn’t mentioned Jess at all. He suddenly has the horrible thought of _this is how it starts_ and then panics and wonders if he should call her back and tell her, just to absolve himself of the weird guilt he has of trying to sort shit out with his ex-girlfriend.

He doesn’t though, because he’s not brave enough, and instead watches terrible reality TV and feels like the worst person ever. And _so fucking lonely_.

 

Clint manages to avoid the entire subject for the next four days. He doesn’t mention it to Natasha, even though that makes him feel like shit, and he just doesn’t call Kate. Not, he thinks, that she notices. They still trash talk via text, but she’s having fun in New Mexico with Em so she has much better things to be doing.

Jess hasn’t got in contact at all and Clint doesn’t even know if she’s still in Willowdale or if she’s gone back to Alabama, or New Orleans, or even London. He feels like he should check – you can’t have a conversation with the other person gone – but equally he doesn’t feel ready for that yet. So he goes to work and watches TV and hangs out with Steve and Bucky when they’re around, Bucky talking his ear off about the tattoo he’s bullied Steve into designing to cover up Patrick.

Which, incidentally, Clint still finds hilarious.

“It’s like… bionic or some shit. All metal looking. A complete sleeve. Cool yeah?”

It’s hot as hell outside and Bucky has, unusually for him, opted for sleeved t-shirts. Steve and Clint find this hands down hysterical. He’s also taken to camping out in the bike shop when he’s not at the comic shop he and Steve work at – The Bean Tree being Steve’s second job. Logan doesn’t give a shit as long as work gets done, so Clint fixes parts behind the counter and Bucky writes and talks and _talks_. He got over his hang up of Clint seeing Natasha pretty quickly. It took him longer to get over Steve telling Clint about Patrick before him though.

“So what’s happening with Patrick then?”

“Well, it’ll have to have a star on it, at the shoulder, but the metal… bionic-ness should distract.”

“From the eyes you can still see?” Clint laughs.

“It’s gonna be dark grey too!”

Clint grins. “Yeah, sure.”

 

Clint texts Jess on a Saturday in mid-July. He really hopes she’s still in Willowdale, though he doesn’t know who she would be staying with if she is.

[Still want to talk?]

He sends it around eleven in the morning. She replies nine hours later. The whole thing is going to be awkward as fuck anyway so he guesses it’d take that long to word a decent reply.

_[Yes.]_

Or not. At least she’s still in Willowdale though.

[My house okay?] Because Clint sure as hell is not doing this in a park this time.

_[Are you going to yell at me again?]_

[Are you going to piss me off?]

They were a fucking time bomb. He doesn’t understand how he never saw it coming. But then again, they were awesome friends beforehand. Clint wonders why it is that seeing someone naked makes everything different.

_[Point. When?]_

Clint sighs and scrubs his hands through his hair. _Adult_ , he’s an _adult_.

[Tomorrow? 5 at mine? I’ll get pizza. Maybe that’ll make it less awkward.]

 _[Okay.]_ And then, half an hour later: _[Didn’t think you had it in you.]_

Clint would be pissed, but she’s right.

[Neither did I.] he texts back honestly. It’s not her fault he has issues coming out of his ears. (Ha! Literally.)

There’s silence for about five minutes and then: _[You think we’ll be alright?]_

[Eventually, yeah.]

And fuck, he really hopes so.

 

Clint chose five because then he can go and spend the morning (and much of the afternoon) on the range and calm the fuck down before Jess turns up. He’s determined not to yell or get angry or… whatever. Determined not to fuck this up; to actually work everything out so he can go back to having an awesome friend and not feeling like shit for lying (by omission) to his… girlfriend. Girlfriend? Natasha.

He orders pizza, because pizza makes everything better, and then has a shower and mooches around the house waiting until either the pizza or Jess turns up, whichever happens first.

Clint hopes it’s the pizza, but it’s Jess.

“Hi,” she says as he opens the door.

“Hi.”

Neither of them move for a moment, and Clint can feel the awkward creeping up his spine. He so doesn’t want to do this. He wants one of those black screens you get in movies that say THREE HOURS LATER and when it cuts back everything has been sorted out. But that doesn’t happen in real life, so.

“Are you going to let me in?” Jess asks after a while, with a little half smile on her face.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry.” Clint steps out of the way to let her in. “Make yourself at home.”

The pizza guy turns up just as Clint’s about to shut the door, which gives him something to hide behind as he turns to face Jess, who has reclaimed the chair she’d liked when they were dating.

“My dad had an affair for about three years when I was in secondary – high – school,” Jess says, apropos of nothing.

“What?” Clint says, thrown completely.

“It was with someone in the bio labs at UCL, some tech. He’d stay late at work, lie on top of lie on top of lie about what he was doing. For three years. When he came clean it rocked us all, because dad wasn’t the type. We knew the department was having trouble and he was stressed but… no one guessed that. Mum was devastated and I felt _so fucking betrayed_.”

She sighs and doesn’t look at him. “I guess… I guess evasiveness about something now just makes me scared something like that is happening again.”

And Clint thinks, _crap_. “And then we had a fight and I thought we’d broken up when we hadn’t and I slept with someone else.”

“Yeah,” Jess says, fiddling with the cushion cover. “Then that happened.”

“ _Fuck_.”

They’re silent for a while, with the only movement being Clint sitting down and opening the pizza box. He pushes it towards Jess; pepperoni, peppers, sweetcorn, mushrooms and extra cheese – Jess’ favourite combination. Clint’s not a total dick.

“Are your folks still together?” he asks eventually.

“Yeah,” she replies, reaching for a slice. “They had marriage counselling and all that jazz. I mean, I sort of get it, ‘cause they were both so busy they stopped making time for each other but… it still hurts. Dad can tell. I mean, I love him, but it was a dick move. Most of the time I feel I’ve forgiven him. Not always though. It was rough for a few years.”

“Is that why you came to the States for college? To get away?”

“Yeah.”

Clint grabs a pizza slice too, and absently picks the mushrooms off before eating it in about three bites.

“Sorry,” he says, honest but muffled through the food.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Not about that. Though yeah, about that. But… you know.” He shrugs and looks away.

Jess sighs again. “Not entirely your fault either.”

“Mostly my fault,” Clint insists. He is _epic_ at guilt. Epic at it.

“No. I – yes sort of but… we didn’t talk. I didn’t tell you why you not talking was bothering me. You didn’t tell me stuff. We didn’t talk. We never tried to fix it when the cracks first started to appear. And then there was… whatever was happening with Kate, and you with exams and applying for placements, and me with my dissertation – thesis – and getting ready to graduate and move back home, and my best friend was signing up for the Air Force and could easily get deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan as a result and I was terrified of that. I mean, she could still go and I’m still scared. But… we didn’t talk and the timing was terrible.”

Clint looks at her for a good long while. Notes how she’s curled into the chair with the cushion in her lap, looking small and vulnerable. Unsure. Tired. And Clint runs over those nine months they dated in his head. And yeah, the timing was shitty, everything coming to a head in February, and then Kate’s _thing_ and Jess’ thesis and Carol’s decision (though if they’d been paying the least bit of attention, they’d’ve seen that coming) and… yeah. Shitty timing.

“Give me two minutes,” Clint says suddenly, taking out his phone.

“What?” Jess says, looking up. “Why?”

“I think it’ll help. Sort of… context. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says bemused. “Sure.”

Clint calls Kate. As the call connects he briefly debates staying on the couch then decides that if Kate says no it would be better if the whole thing took place in the kitchen.

“Hey jeckface, wazzup?” Kate sounds happy, and Clint smiles briefly before answering.

“Um… not bad. Can I ask you something?” he says hesitantly.

“Yeah sure,” and Kate sounds confused now.

“Can I tell Jess about Jack?”

There is dead silence on the other end, but Clint waits it out. He knows he’s asking a lot.

“Why?” Kate says eventually, and Clint is so glad he told Kate about Jess turning up, because having to explain now would suck.

“We’re trying to sort our shit out and… neither of us have yelled at each other yet. And… context. I think this might help. Not… I won’t tell her details or… anything like that. Just… basics.”

Kate breathes out heavily and down the phone it sounds staticky and weird. Loud.

“I miss Jess. She’s awesome,” Kate says.

“Yeah. Yeah she is. I… if you don’t want me to, I won’t. Tell her.”

Another loud breath.

“Sorry,” Clint says quietly.

More silence, then, “Okay, do it. But I swear to God, Barton, if you do this and then fuck it up I will hurt you so much.”

“Deal,” Clint says. “And thanks. And… sorry. You know, again.”

Kate breathes out a huffy little laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Jerk.” A pause and then, “Thanks for asking, Clint.”

“Always,” Clint says. “Oh and by the way, Jess knows you’re bi now. I let that slip, sorry. I thought you’d told her?”

“No I hadn’t.” She sighs. “I wasn’t… I just. Jack. I didn’t want people to know right then. Not… Yeah.”

“Got it,” Clint says, gently. “Go get hugs from Em. I’ll see you in August yeah?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “See if Jess can stick around till I get back yeah?”

“Will do. See you, Hawkeye.”

“Bye, Hawkeye.”

Clint hangs up and takes a deep breath before shooting a quick text to Em – [Look after Kate for me] – and making his way back into the front room. Em replies just as Clint sits down.

_[Always do, chico]_

Clint smiles.

“So what was that for?” Jess asks. She’s eaten at least half the pizza in the five minutes Clint’s been gone. She looks a little more relaxed and Clint is pleased about that, even if there’s not much pizza left for him now.

“Permission,” he says, grabbing a slice and picking the mushrooms off this one as well. Jess raises a questioning eyebrow, then steals his little pile of mushrooms. Clint pulls a face and she sticks her tongue out. Man, they were awesome friends.

“You remember Kate’s boyfriend Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“After Christmas the year we dated he…” Clint pauses, wondering how best to phrase this. “He decided bisexuals weren’t a thing, and that ‘no’ didn’t actually mean ‘no’.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “So that was ‘the thing with Kate’.”

Jess looks at him incredulously.

“ _Seriously?_ ”

“Yeah,” says Clint and he can feel the rage bubble up again. “Yeah, really.”

Jess is silent for a moment with an expression on her face that implies that she’s reviewing a bunch of information and coming up with a different answer than last time.

“What the fuck!” she suddenly exclaims. “Was she okay? What did she do? Please tell me she pressed charges.”

“Yeah, yeah. She was okay. Well, he didn’t… manage. She punched him. And then told me and I punched him. I – really hard. Repeatedly. Like… I was so fucking pissed. It – it sort of looked like an unprovoked attack actually. I… got a disciplinary. But only – it wasn’t bad. I persuaded Kate to press charges – not for me obviously but… I got let off, sort of, when that came out. Jack was suspended, and likely kicked out, pending disciplinary action and the police and shit but… Kate testified and then didn’t want anything to do with it so… I didn’t follow it up.”

Jess looks horrified – justifiably – then abruptly shudders. “Urgh! And I liked him! He was – seemed – nice!” She’s rubbing at her arms, almost unconsciously. “God I feel unclean.”

She’s staring into the middle distance and Clint doesn’t interrupt because he _knows_ that need to process. He spent hours doing it; staring at the ceiling on sleepless nights and trying to work out if there was something he missed, some early warning signal he could have caught to spare Kate all that pain. In the days that followed, he spent _a lot_ of time with Thor in the gym.

Then it dawns on her: “Hey, was that the fight you wouldn’t talk to me about?”

Clint sighs and scrubs his hands over his head. “Yeah, and why I asked you not to come round and then didn’t talk to you for about two weeks.” Something she’d listened to, which at the time hadn’t been guaranteed. Clint was grateful for that.

“Wow,” Jess says. “That’s… _fuck_.”

She doesn’t say anything for a while but after a moment, she turns to him.

“I hereby apologise for any shit I gave you while that was going on,” she says in an imperious tone, as if she’s decreeing a mandate from heaven, and Clint can’t help but smile. It’s such a Jess response – both supportive and final; change the subject for now, I’ll get back to you once I’ve worked it all out.

He nods and pulls the mushrooms off the last few slices of pizza before eating them in quick succession and deciding that, maybe, today is a beer day.

“You want a beer?”

“Fuck yes,” she says vehemently. Then, when she remembers, “Wait… no? Are you…?”

Clint smiles as she fumbles and eventually just takes pity on her and butts in gently with, “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t okay with it. I’m having one. I do drink occasionally, as you may recall.”

Jess laughs, slightly self-deprecating. “Um… yeah. Do you… have something stronger?”

And Clint realises, yeah, if he wants a beer, Jess will definitely want something stronger.

“As in, stronger than wine?” Beer and wine is all that’s kept in the kitchen.

“Um, yes?”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Sound sure of yourself why don’t you,” he says teasingly, then, “Hold on.”

Clint fires off a quick text to Kate again and about thirty seconds later Jess’ phone buzzes.

“It’s Kate,” Jess says, bemused, as she checks her phone.

Clint laughs. “Yeah, I know,” he says before waving her towards Kate’s room. “Go steal her booze.”

Jess still looks confused but disappears into Kate’s room in search of whatever liquor Kate’s got stashed away in there. It’s probably either whiskey, tequila, or vodka, so Clint really doesn’t want to know. Instead he grabs a beer from the fridge and then rummages around until he finds some Coke for Jess.

“Whiskey!” Jess crows triumphantly as she comes back into the room. “Please tell me you have mixers.”

“Um, yeah,” Clint says, handing over the Coke while eyeing the bottle in Jess’ hand warily.

“Not good?” Jess asks when she notices. “You want me to change it?”

“No, no, it’s alright. Just… keep it over there. I hate the smell.”

Jess gives him a searching look and then nods before pouring herself a measure, capping the bottle and placing it on the windowsill by her chair.

“Okay, so,” Jess says, after taking a generous swig of her Jack and Coke. “My dad cheated on my mum, _your_ dad was… a Grade A wanker and Kate was… attacked.”

She pulls a face then. “God, that makes me angry.”

Clint snorts. “Tell me about it.”

Jess stares very intently into the middle distance for a moment.

“Okay! Okay, so the upshot is we were shit at being in a relationship and also the timing sucked.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Jess looks over at Clint then, her gaze very intent, and Clint fights not to fidget.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” She says eventually, kicking her legs over the arm of the chair. “It’s not… we’re not trying to save anything. I mean, we _are_ , like, our friendship and all that, but… all that shit that we wound each other up with, that didn’t happen when we were friends.” She leans forward and smiles, not her big Jess-smile, but a real smile nonetheless.

“It’s just nice to know a bit of the why.”

Clint returns her smile and then, fiddling with his beer label, he takes a deep breath and says, “I’m sorry I slept with someone else while we were still together.”

Jess’ lips go very thin for a moment, but then she nods, just once.

“Apology accepted. I’m sorry I just yelled and didn’t explain or anything. Generally, but also that day in particular. I’d had a _really shitty_ day that day.”

“Apology accepted,” Clint replies. “What the hell were we even arguing about?”

Jess scrunches up her face.

“Indian vs. Thai, I think. Which escalated to include all our major character flaws. Impressive really.”

Clint looks at her incredulously.

“Indian vs. Thai? Seriously?”

“Yup, pretty sure.”

Clint laughs.

“Christ, what a mess,” he says, before smirking and saying, “For the record though: Thai.”

Jess throws a pillow at him.

“Don’t be a dick,” she says, laughing.

Clint grins. “Hey, now the serious shit is over, you want to watch a movie?”

Jess slumps back into the cushions.

“Yeah sure,” she says, before sitting up abruptly and saying, “No, wait. One more question.”

Clint stops rifling through Kate’s DVD tower.

“Um, okay,” he says, looking over at her apprehensively.

“You mentioned a brother. I didn’t know you had a brother. What happened to him?”

“Oh.” Clint sits back on his heels and scrubs his hand over his head. “Um, he’s in jail in Detroit for dealing. Meth mostly, and dope.”

Jess’ eyes go wide and her mouth drops open.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Clint sighs. “Stellar gene pool I come from, so not all that surprising I fucked up.”

“Woah, hey no,” Jess says, her shocked expression quickly replaced by a frown. “That’s not how this works. Your bother and dad were shitty but that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

“Which is definitely the reason I can’t drink alcohol and why I beat the shit out of a guy in a college canteen.”

“Okay,” Jess says sharply, and the force of her statement snaps his gaze to hers. “One, recognising the potential for alcohol dependency in yourself and then removing the temptation automatically puts you a step ahead of your dad, and two, beating the shit out of a guy for trying to r – “ Jess inhales sharply, and Clint’s chest clenches. “Trying to rape your friend,” Jess continues, deliberately even, “is completely justifiable.”

Clint can feel the anger bubble up at that, remembering Kate’s face and stuttered admission and _Christ._ Clint hopes Jack is somewhere very unpleasant right now.

Jess points at him, her eyebrow arched. “I took a whole three lectures on genetics. I am practically a professional. I know this shit.”

Clint snorts and returns to rifling through DVDs.

“What was your mum like?”

“I thought you only had one more question.”

Jess is silent, just looking at him until he caves and answers.

“She was awesome,” Clint says quietly, fiddling with the case for _Up_. “She tried to protect us as much as she could. Worked her ass off. Let us eat spaghetti hoops. Got me stuff with arrows on when she could afford it ‘cause she noticed I liked archery. She was awesome.”

“So,” says Jess, equally quietly. “She worked her arse off, gave what little she had to other people, protected those who couldn’t protect themselves, and was generally a great mother.”

Clint shrugs.

“Sounds like someone I know,” she says with a smile. “Stellar gene pool you come from.”

Clint doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything, and eventually Jess takes pity on him and drops the subject.

“What are we watching, then?”

“Oh, right. Yeah,” Clint goes back to searching and eventually finds the DVD he wants down the back of the TV.

“Aha!” He brandishes a copy of _Dogma_ at Jess. “Buddy Christ fixes all. You in?”

“For Alan Rickman? Always.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a piñata, a party and a prison visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, once again, to **inkvoices** for beta and **geckoholic** for cheerleading.

Of all the things Clint expected this summer to entail, spending a lot of his free time in parks with Jess Drew was not one of them.

They get most of the heavy shit dealt with within the first week or so – mainly at Clint’s – and through mutual agreement immediately move on to trying to rebuild their friendship. There are rough patches for sure – they don’t really discuss relationships and Clint tries not to mention Natasha too much, which in all honesty he finds rather difficult – but they’re slowly building between them something strong enough to weather the likely event of Clint putting his foot in it again. It mostly involves them talking about their childhood, which Clint isn’t thrilled about, but it’s getting easier. And he’s by no means telling her _everything_.

“So, do you have any plans for the rest of the summer?” Jess asks the evening before she’s due to visit Carol in Alabama. She’ll probably manage to squeeze in a visit to Monica in New Orleans too, before she has to go back to London. Clint misses Carol and Monica.

“Well, Em, Kate, and Nat all get back the last Saturday of August and Kate will throw her usual End of Summer Party. You can come if you’re still around, Kate’d like to say hi. And then,” Clint scrubs the back of his neck, “then I’m going to visit Barney. In – in Detroit.”

Jess stares at him for a moment. “You mean, in – ?”

Prison. Because Barney’s in prison. Stupid fucking idiot.

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” she says after a beat. “Wow, that’s… do you go often?”

“Once a year since I found out three years ago.”

“And it’s…?”

“Fucking awful. But, y’know. Family and all that.”

Jess starts ripping up the grass by her knee. Jailed family members don’t make for good conversation and Clint desperately wants to change the subject, he just can’t think of anything suitable.

“Awful how?” Jess asks eventually, tentatively.

And, Jesus fuck, Jess, of all the fucking questions. He’s not getting into it. It’s bad enough Kate giving him sad eyes every time they go – because of course Kate drives him, she wouldn’t let him go any other way. He doesn’t want to explain it to someone else only to get the same reaction. He knows it’s dumb. He knows it’s pointless. He knows it doesn’t do him any good. But he’s lost everyone else; if he’s gonna lose Barney too it’s not going to be through something _he_ does or doesn’t do.

“Never mind,” she says when he doesn’t answer. “I’d… I’d like to come to your party though, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah,” he says with effort, “yeah, sure.” The uncomfortable feeling is passing with the switch in subject and _thank Christ,_ because he doesn’t want to think about it until he absolutely has to. “You can meet Em and – and Nat.” Though maybe that’s a terrible idea.

Jess holds his gaze for a little while and Clint can’t read her expression at all. He’d forgotten how inscrutable she can be if she wants and he can’t say he’s missed that particular personality trait.

“Yeah,” she says eventually, a small smile on her face. “I’d like that.”

 

On those evenings when he’s not hanging out in parks with his ex-girlfriend, Clint spends hours on the phone with Natasha like some terrible 80s rom-com cliché. He’d care, but at the same time it’s _Natasha_ ; if there’s anyone worth being a cliché over, it’s her. So he updates her on Bucky’s tattoo woes and the ‘bionic arm’ design Steve has been pressganged into creating for him. He tells her about the weird customers he’s dealt with recently (and seriously – there was this one guy that was just _bizarre_ ) and the Snapchats Kate’s been sending him of the various enormous sombreros she refuses to buy him. And in return Natasha informs him of the inner workings of the French Embassy and enforces his view that there are some people who have too much money and not enough sense.

“…and then,” Natasha says, frustration evident in her tone, “I had a fancy dinner with my boss and some French someone-or-other who wasn’t particularly subtle when staring at my breasts and I was just tired enough to think a really cutting remark was a good idea. Luckily his wife – who was _right there_ – thought that was _très courageuse_ and that she wouldn’t have had the confidence to stand up to people like that when she was my age, which makes me wonder why it was she married him in the first place.”

Clint hasn’t really had a chance to get a word in edgeways since he picked up the phone tonight but as Natasha’s summer has, on the whole, been way more interesting that his, he’s content to wait her out. Plus, he’ll never tire of listening to Natasha. He could listen to her read the phone book and he’d still think she was the best thing ever.

“It’s just… this is a great opportunity and most of the time it’s really interesting, but I’m _so tired_ and I miss you and lounging around and… you know, dumb stuff. Like swearing. I sort of really miss swearing.”

Clint snorts out a laugh.

“The French don’t swear?”

“Oh, I’m sure they do, it’s just we’re terribly polite and professional. It gets a little boring after a while. Plus,” she says derisively, “nice girls don’t _swear_.”

Yeah, ‘nice girls’ don’t swear and ‘nice girls’ just stand around and are expected to be happy that a guy pays them any attention at all. Clint sometimes wants to punch the world.

Speaking of ‘nice girls’…

“Hey” – don’t be a coward, Barton – “did I ever tell you about Jess?”

“You are incredibly skilled at changing the subject.”

“It’s my super power.”

Natasha laughs, sounding weirdly breathy down the phone.

“Unless this is an expansion on ‘Jess my ex-girlfriend’, yes, you have told me about Jess,” she says.

“This is an expansion.”

“Oh, okay. Shoot.”

“Um, well, she came over last week and we…um, sorted stuff out.”

Clint suddenly realises what that sounds like.

“Talked!” he amends quickly. “We talked. Jesus, Barton.”

“Oh,” Natasha says. “Good. You had me worried then.”

Clint makes an aborted attempt to run his hand through his hair, and then remembers Natasha can’t _see_ him being weird and neurotic so does it anyway.

“Yeah.”

“Is Jess the ex with whom you broke up because you slept with someone else?” Natasha asks after a moment.

Clint’s heart sinks. He’d forgotten he’d told her that.

“Um, there were other things as well,” Clint says, “but essentially: yes.”

“Okay,” Natasha says. She’s quiet for a while and then asks, “So, you’re good now? Can be friends and all that?”

“Yeah, yeah. I think so.”

“Good,” she replies distractedly, “that’s good.”

There’s another pause.

“Are you okay?” Clint forces himself to ask eventually.

“Yes! Yes, God, sorry. You just threw me for a loop for a second.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m glad you and Jess have worked stuff out. Talking is always good.”

There’s a slightly awkward silence,

“It was an accident,” Clint says eventually, even though he’s fairly sure he’s told her this before. “I don’t… I wouldn’t… I don’t do that. It’s just…”

“You don’t have to expl – “

“We didn’t talk,” Clint interrupts. “We – I thought we’d split up. But… we hadn’t. I… don’t. I wouldn’t do that. To you.”

There’s a long silence again, and Clint is dreading the rather obvious rejoinder of the ‘but you did it to Jess’ variety that he’s sure is coming. But instead Natasha just says, “Thank you.”

 _What?_ Clint doesn’t really know what to do with that… acceptance? Whatever that is. He doesn’t quite understand Natasha’s ability to… let go of stuff? Get what he means, not what he’s actually saying? And he can admit to himself that it makes him wary. He can’t tell if it’s genuine, even though he has no reason to believe that she’s lying to him. But… Jess would have harped on about it; tried to find motives and assurances and reasons. Kate would tell him he was a douche and never to do that again, which is true, but never makes him feel better. America would probably say something about motives and promises.

But Natasha just says ‘thank you’ like she trusts him, and he doesn’t understand _why_.

Over the phone, Natasha sighs.

“I wish I was with you.”

“Why?” Clint blurts out before he can stop himself. She’s in DC. Why would she want to be stuck in a boring college town with him?

“Because I can practically _hear_ you stressing down the phone, солнышко,” she says. “Don’t _worry_. I am definitely the kind of person to tell you if something was bothering me. Promise. Also, I miss you. With your dumb laugh and your stupid hair and your awesome friends and your smile.”

Clint makes guppy faces he’s really glad she can’t see. He feels like something large, heavy, and immovable has taken up residence in his chest and all he can think is what the fuck did he ever do to deserve someone like Natasha Romanov?

“And you know what else?”

“What?” Clint says, probably sounding less together than he’d like.

“I’m really glad you locked yourself out of your house that day.”

 

 _[Got you a really big piñata]_ Kate texts a couple of nights before she’s due back.

[But I want a sombrero] Clint replies, because he can be whiney when he’s tired and Jesus, when that Parker kid wrecks his bike he goes all out.

_[Oh sure, turn down candy.]_

[If I grow a moustache, will you get me a sombrero?]

_[If you grow a moustache, I will disown you as a friend.]_

Clint laughs at that.

[Acceptable. I’ll take the piñata then.]

_[Damn right you will.]_

 

Thing is, when Kate had texted ‘really big piñata’, Clint had imagined something maybe a meter tall _at the most_. This though, this is ridiculous.

“It’s fucking huge.”

“Yeah, I said it was.”

“Yeah but…” Clint squints at it a little more. “It’s _really, really big._ How did you even get it here?”

The piñata is sitting menacingly in the corner of their front room. Its head nearly brushes the ceiling.

“Tied it to the roof of the car,” Kate says.

“You flew,” Clint says. “Also, you can’t drive from New Mexico to Virginia with a papier-mâché eagle on the roof of your car.”

“No,” she says, not helping at all. “You can’t.”

Clint stares at it for a little while more. They must have smuggled it in when he went out to buy snacks. They definitely didn’t have it with them when they arrived back. Where the fuck were they even _keeping it?_

“No seriously,” Clint says again, after another moment of stunned silence.

“Trade secret.”

Clint glares at her. “What fucking trade?”

“Drugs trade,” Em cuts in as she hip-checks the front door, her arms full of party lights. “There’s Grade A cocaine inside that. Sorry chico.” She rearranges her grip on the lights so she can pat him on the head. “You’ve been duped.”

“Well,” Clint says decisively, hands on his hips, “then I’m taking you down with me.”

Em laughs, because she’s awful. “Yeah, chico. You just try that.”

Clint looks at it some more. “Is it… is it wearing glasses?”

“Of course,” Kate says like it’s obvious. “He’s a _Hawkeye_.”

Clint looks at her like she’s gone mad.

“Also,” she says, before putting something on his head.

“Oh my God.”

“We got you a damn sombrero.”

It’s huge, Clint can tell. He rushes into Kate’s room to check himself out in her full length mirror and almost gets stuck in the doorway.

“You look like an idiot,” Em says, smiling, and Clint laughs, because yeah. He kind of really does.

“Now,” Kate calls. “Get the fuck out of my room. I’ve got hard liquor to hide.”

“You’re the best,” Clint says as he passes Kate and then, on a whim, he gives her a horrible sloppy kiss on the cheek and she can’t bat him away because her arms are full of tequila.

“Urgh!”

Kate scrunches her nose up and Clint laughs loud enough to almost drown out the knock at the door.

“Gringo gets the door!” Em calls from where she’s hanging up the lights and Clint flips her the bird. God but he’s missed these two.

“Hey,” he says, making sure the sombrero is sat properly on his head. “Someone get some string or something. We’re going to string that sucker up and beat the crap out of it before people turn up tonight. Who wants candy?” He wrenches the door open, still looking over his shoulder at Em, who’s now rummaging around in what Kate calls the toolbox, but is actually a packing crate full of shit. “Or Grade A cocaine?”

“What’s this about cocaine, Barton?”

Clint’s head snaps round quick enough that the sombrero gets caught on the door and falls off. Natasha laughs, because of course it’s Natasha.

“Здравствуйте, солнышко,” she says, leaning in to give him a lingering kiss.

“Um, hi,” Clint says dumbly. “What…? I mean, I thought you were coming over later.”

“I was. But now I’m here.”

Clint can hear weird frantic scrambling behind him.

“You – when did you get back from DC?”

Natasha looks at her watch – because she is totally the type of person to have a watch rather than use her phone to tell the time. “About five minutes ago,” she says.

“I – “

“We’re going to Em’s, have fun, bye!” Kate suddenly says, dragging Em past Clint and Natasha and out the door. “Don’t have sex where Hawkeye can see you!”

Clint’s brain scrambles at the absurdity of that statement.

“You _named_ it Hawkeye?” he calls after her.

“Duh!”

Clint blinks stupidly before coming back to himself and looking over at where Natasha is smirking at him with an odd, soft expression in her eyes.

“Um.”

“So who is Hawkeye and why can’t we have sex when they’re around?”

There is a very brief moment where Clint just stares at her like he has no idea what she’s talking about.

“Oh, um. It’s a piñata?”

“What?”

Clint gestures for her to come in, and then points to where the giant papier-mâché eagle is sat in the corner.

“Shit that’s big,” Natasha says quietly. “And it’s full of sweets?”

“Streamers and glitter is more likely. Or cocaine, if Em is to be believed.”

“Ah.”

Natasha considers the eagle for a moment before picking Clint’s sombrero off the floor and putting it on its head. She then smirks at him, a tiny little thing that causes all Clint’s blood to rush south so fast he feels dizzy, and tips the sombrero so it covers the eagle’s glasses.

“There,” she says lowly, turning to face him fully. “Now he can’t see anything.”

 _Technically_ Clint and Kate have a rule about not having sex on the couch. _Technically_. But, well, there’s still time to relocate. It’s just… Natasha is very distracting. And Clint hasn’t seen her in two months. But there’s still – they can –

Natasha sticks her hand down his pants.

“ _Jesus_.”

“You like that?”

Natasha smirks at him looking rumpled and delicious and _holy fuck_. She’s going to kill him.

“Bedroom,” Clint pants and he tugs her hand out of his pants, which – oh my god – is awful and terrible and why did he do that?

Clint whines at the loss of contact.

“What’s wrong with the couch?” Natasha asks. But then she kisses him so he can’t answer.

“Rules,” he manages when she pulls away slightly. And then “Kate rules,” the next time he’s got breath enough to speak. “Jesus fuck, Tash.”

He wrenches their mouths apart only long enough for him to tug her top off. “Fucking – ”

Natasha moans into his mouth and sticks a hand back down his pants.

“Bedroom,” Clint says between kisses, mostly as a reminder rather than an instruction. “Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom.”

But then his pants have gone and her shirt has gone and there are hands and mouths seemingly everywhere and this all deteriorated very, very quickly.

They do make it to Clint’s bedroom, but only just. Natasha laughs when he trips over a stray shoe and then again when Clint tries to get her jeans off without removing her boots first. She bites his ass when he leans over to grab a condom and Clint gets revenge by tickling her. It’s hot – both in temperature and, y’know, _hotness_ , because Natasha is wearing a fantastic set of matching lingerie because it’s almost like she _knows him_ – and Clint is breathless from laughing and kisses by the end; sticky and spent and so damn happy.

He tries to move away to avoid actually melting into Natasha from the heat, but she suddenly laughs, loud and delighted, and wraps herself around him so tight he can hardly move.

“Ты-самое лучшее, что когда-либо случалось со мной.”

“What?”

Someday, he thinks as her breath tickles over his shoulder, he’s going to have to learn Russian.

“You called me Tash.”

Natasha turns her head just enough to look him in the face. She doesn’t loosen her hold though.

“Um – ”

“I like it,” she says smiling.

Natasha’s proper smiles, the big, carefree ones when she’s actually happy, look slightly out of place on her face. Not because they don’t suit her or anything bullshit like that, but because it seems too _big_. She always gives off this calm, cool, collected persona; someone whose smiles are professional and who is competent and in control. And she is, of course she’s that person, but she’s also the person who owns fuzzy penguin pyjama bottoms and a myriad of joke linguistics t-shirts. She’s also the person who dates – sees? Fuck’s sake, Barton, dates. _Dates_ – losers like Clint Barton.

When she smiles like that he’s suddenly hit with the force of just how much joy her compact, professional self can contain. Clint thinks it’s a bit like looking at the sun.

“I missed you so much,” she says.

Clint opens his mouth to say something, but can’t think of what so snaps it shut again. His phone goes off in the other room, the generic tone that means it’s not Kate, Em, or Logan and therefore can be ignored.

Natasha’s smile gets, if possible, wider.

“Shower, then food,” she says, untangling herself and getting off the bed, and Clint just lies there because he’s an idiot, but also because naked Natasha Romanov is goddamn glorious. The sheets are tangled at his feet – or, more accurately, mostly on the floor – and he’s suddenly exposed to Natasha’s hungry gaze.

“Addendum,” she says, after raking her gaze over his body. “Shower, shower _sex_ , then food.”

And Clint can’t help but grin at that because _goddamn_. But also:

“Did you just use ‘addendum’ in reference to our sex lives?” he says incredulously, his hand out as a silent request for Natasha to haul him out of bed, which she does, right into her personal space.

“Yup,” comes the cheery reply. “Look at all the interesting things you learn from a language degree.”

“I dunno. I’m not sure I want _caveats_.”

“Did you learn that from _your_ fancy degree, Doc?”

“Naw,” Clint says, laying the Midwestern on thick and pulling her into the bathroom. Thank God no one else is in right now or they’d get an eye-full. “Doctors don’ speak proper good.”

Natasha laughs as he pulls her against him, which turns to a moan as he slides his hand between her legs.

“We’re _very_ good at anatomy though.”

 

They’ve relocated to the couch when Clint’s phone rings again, hours later, this time with Kate’s obnoxious ringtone. It’s still hotter than strictly necessary for seven in the evening, so Clint’s just in some ratty sweatpants, while Natasha turned his room over to find the t-shirt he lent her all those months ago to wear with her very pretty panties. They could get _more_ dressed, but where would the fun be in that? Besides, Natasha’s thighs are wonderfully soft.

“There’s a car outside,” Kate says as soon as Clint picks up.

“Get in it if you want to live?” Clint says and Natasha looks at him strangely, her hands continuing to card through his hair.

“No.” Clint can hear her eye roll. “It’s just weird.”

“You rang to tell me that?”

“Nope, I rang to remind you that we’re having a party tonight and it was your idea, so you better not be having sex on the couch.”

“If I were having sex, I wouldn’t have picked up the phone.”

“Good,” Kate says and then Clint hears the door open and Kate and Em come in, with Em’s flatmates and a bunch of their other friends. And Jess.

“We bumped into Jess walking over,” Em supplies before Kate buts in with, “Natasha! Introductions: Billy, Teddy, Anya, Kamala, David, Jubilee, Ganke, Eli, Jess. You already know Miles. Guys, this is Natasha, my Russian tutor and Clint’s SO.”

There’s a beat of silence. Clint wants to mention that Kate has actually dropped Russian in favour of learning Spanish for – fairly obvious – reasons, but maybe now is not the time.

“I’m going to put pants on,” Natasha says, forcing Clint to sit up before leaving the room with more grace and dignity than someone in a t-shirt and panties should possess.

“I tried to convince Kate that more warning might be nice,” Em says before Kate barrels over her again with a smug, “You forgot didn’t you?” while everyone else studiously looks anywhere but the couch.

“Not… entirely.”

Em snorts. “Go get dressed, chico.”

Clint waves awkwardly at Jess just before leaving the room and gets a half smile in return.

Natasha is sat on his bed when he walks in, back to looking perfectly made up in that way only Natasha can. She’s smiling slightly.

“We sort of messed up there, didn’t we?”

Clint smiles in return as he pulls on his jeans. “You’re _distracting_.”

“Oh, so this is my fault?” she says impishly.

Clint shrugs and pulls on his t-shirt. “Be less distracting.”

“You be less distracting.”

“I’m not distracting.”

“You,” Natasha says, leaning forward to grab his belt loops and drag him between her thighs, “are distracting. This,” – she sweeps her hands up and under his t-shirt – “is _very_ distracting. You are a distracting, distracting man, Clint Barton.”

“Distracting doesn’t sound like a word anymore now,” Clint complains.

Natasha pokes him in the stomach. “ _Distracting_.”

“Masterfully. Also, necessary,” Clint says. “I have guests now.”

As if on cue, there’s a knock at Clint’s door and Kate’s voice comes through saying, “Beefcake and Patrick are here!”

Natasha frowns in confusion and Clint grins, pulling away from Natasha’s hands and heading towards the door.

“Steve and Bucky,” he clarifies as he drags her into the front room and Natasha laughs.

For a party at which his current girlfriend is meeting his ex-girlfriend for the first time – something Clint can admit he was nervous about – everything goes fantastically well. Jess is slightly wary of Natasha for about five minutes, but then Natasha mentions that she’s been to London on several occasions and they end up talking about clubs and bars and museums Clint has no idea about, so he leaves them to it. Instead he gets into a convoluted conversation with Bucky about how it is he lives in such a nice place – convoluted because Kate’s dad owns it and Clint doesn’t pay rent, which he sort of doesn’t want to tell anyone. The shit he owes Kate Bishop, honestly – and then with Kate’s friends Ganke and Kamala, who are both math and computer nerds which leaves Clint floundering. But then Kamala mentions comics and Bucky homes in on her like a bloodhound and Clint ends up with Miles, the ‘really attractive guy’ from Kate’s old Russian class, sat out in the garden by the back wall.

“Apparently you’re the ‘really attractive guy’ in Katie-Kate’s Russian class,” Clint tells him, because he’s tired, warm, has had a beer and is feeling floaty.

“Um, yeah,” Miles flushes and looks awkward for a moment. “She said.”

“Oh, okay then.”

Clint squints at him slightly.

“Hey, do you know what sol-nysh-ka means?”

“Huh?”

“Sol-nysh-ka. I don’t really know. Something,” he waves his hand vaguely. “Something like that.”

“What’s the context?” Miles asks.

“Me.”

“You?”

“Yeah, like I’m sol-nysh-ka.”

Miles looks at him blankly. “Something to do with the sun?” He frowns slightly. “Sorry man, I have no idea.”

Clint shrugs vaguely. “Eh, never mind then.”

And then Natasha drops into his lap and the lawn chair Clint’s sat in creaks ominously. Miles takes one look at the two of them and goes from slightly awkward to super fucking awkward in about three seconds flat.

“Billy and Teddy are making out on the couch inside, Steve, Bucky, and Kamala are talking comics on the patio, Jess, Kate, Jubilee, Ganke, David, and Eli are talking about police brutality under the tree, and America and Anya are in the kitchen discussing telenovelas _en Español_ , so I thought I’d come over and bother you.” Natasha pats Clint absentmindedly on the head, looking slightly flushed. “Hi Miles.”

“Hi.”

It comes out in almost a whisper. Clint wonders if Miles has a crush on Natasha, not that he’d blame him. Everyone has a crush on Natasha. Teddy and Billy probably have a crush on Natasha and Teddy and Billy are the gayest guys Clint has ever met.

Or maybe it’s because Miles saw Natasha in her underwear only four hours ago.

Clint frowns. Okay, no, that wasn’t cool.

“Up, up.”

“But I’ve just sat _down_ ,” Natasha says, whining more that she probably would without the aid of alcohol.

“Need to talk to Katie,” Clint says, shoving gently at her thigh.

“It’s like you don’t want to talk to me,” Natasha says playfully, getting out of his lap so Clint can stand up. He kisses her in answer and Miles shifts uncomfortably. Someone should probably just let him go, poor guy.

“Hey Miles,” Clint says, giving him an out, “you don’t need to be polite, you can just leave.”

“Nuh-uh,” Natasha says. “I want to talk to you about a language journal I think you’ll be interested in.”

Clint looks between the two of them. Some of Miles awkwardness has drained out of his body already, just at the mention of languages.

“Okay, then,” Clint says, shuffling slightly awkwardly. Maybe it was _him_ making Miles uncomfortable. The thought makes Clint hunch his shoulders a bit. “I’ll just…” he waves vaguely towards where Kate is sitting. “Sorry for… y’know. Awkward.”

Miles looks surprised.

“No!” He says, looking somehow earnest and uncomfortable at the same time. “It’s… alright. I’m… well, it’s – it’s alright.”

“Okay.” Clint says.

“Okay.”

Clint shifts slightly again, giving Natasha’s ridiculously fond expression one last look before heading off towards where Kate has camped out under the tree. It’s practically blazing with fairy lights, making everyone underneath look slightly otherworldly; a nice counter point to the current conversation topic.

“Can I talk to you for a moment?” he asks, as soon as he’s close enough.

“Hawkeye!” Kate exclaims, clearly a little worse for wear. She stands up and wobbles slightly before glomping him. Clint always forgets she’s heavier than she looks; all that archery muscle.

“Hey, Katie-Kate. I just wanna…” He pulls her out of the hearing range of everyone still sat under the tree.

“What’s up?” she says, leaning into him.

“I think you should apologise to Natasha.”

“What? Why?” Kate is frowning at him, her eyes ever so slightly out of focus.

She’s sliding out of his grip and Clint hauls her back up, getting his shoulder under her arm. “You introduced her to all your friends _and my ex-girlfriend_ while she was in her panties and a t-shirt. Like,” Clint waves his hand vaguely, making Kate slide back down and Clint has to haul her up again. She’s just being annoying now. “We’re… that’s fine when it’s just you and me, y’know? Or Em. But like… she’s. She’s never met Jess. Or, like, half these people before.”

Clint remembers Miles awkwardness. Even if that wasn’t why he was awkward, it’s still not cool.

“She’s yours and Miles’ teacher,” he says.

“I – ”

Kate doesn’t say anything for a moment before she shakes her head and takes her own weight, moving a little way away from Clint and scrubbing her hand over her face.

“Em said it was dumb.”

“Em’s a smart lady. ‘S why you’re dating her.”

“Yeah.”

Kate lapses back into silence.

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “That was pretty shitty of me. Though,” she squints up at Clint, her eyes glittering in the low light, “took you a while to notice.”

“Yeah well, I’m used to you barging in when I’m not dressed. Also, stop deflecting.”

Kate glares half-heartedly before sighing. “Okay.” She runs her hand through her hair and then grimaces when her fingers get snarled in a knot.

“Okay,” she says again. “You stay here. Talk to Eli and David and shit. I’ll…” She gestures towards where Natasha and Miles are sitting, happily chatting away about language journals or whatever.

Clint grins at her. _Dick_ , he signs, his hands quick in the dark.

Kate wrinkles her nose, before grinning and punching him on the arm.

 _Bitch_ , she signs back before heading towards Natasha.

Clint watches long enough to see Kate reach Natasha and lean in to say something in her ear, before he turns and sits down on the grass next to Jess just in time to hear, “…fucked up ideas of what ‘for all’ means,” from Eli.

Well, this’ll be interesting; police brutality as a fun party conversation.

 

The first thing Clint sees when he untangles himself from Natasha and emerges from his room the next morning is the broad back of Steve Rogers as he sleeps sprawled out on their couch. A quick scan of the room reveals Bucky curled up between the coffee table and the TV, face mashed into the cushion Kate’s aunt gave her – the one with the ugly horse on it – and piñata streamers caught in his hair. Clint snorts inelegantly and shuffles on to the kitchen, where Kate looks almost asleep in her coffee while America throws balled up bits of an old grocery receipt at her.

“Coffee’s in the pot,” Em says, taking aim again. “Drink from it and die.”

“Cups are for the weak,” Clint mumbles, but he finds himself one anyway, because Em _will_ kill him. “Also, here.” He takes a little receipt ball from Em, squints a little, and lands it directly in Kate’s coffee. Em laughs and Kate mumbles _fucker_ before flicking coffee all over the table trying to get it out.

“David texted to say ‘the statistic is 1 every 28 hours’,” Em says after a while.

“What statistic?” Kate mumbles.

“I dunno. _The_ statistic.”

“Weird boy,” Kate mumbles into her cup. “Like a walking Wikipedia.”

“That car’s still outside, by the way.”

“Huh?” Kate is really not with it this morning. Clint grins into his coffee.

“The car,” Em says patiently, “just outside the house. The one that isn’t yours.”

“Huh,” Kate says, apparently falling back asleep. “Weird.”

“What’s weird?” Natasha says, coming into the room. She’d insisted Clint find her some pyjama pants this time, which was probably a good thing considering Steve and Bucky stayed over. He doesn’t have any with penguins on them, but he has ones with bull’s-eyes, because Kate thinks she’s hilarious. Natasha’s still wearing his worn thin t-shirt too. She looks fucking perfect. Clint grins and hands her a coffee, before frowning as he remembers she prefers tea in the morning.

Natasha kisses him on the cheek. “It’s fine, don’t worry,” she says quietly before turning back to Em.

“So what’s weird?”

“The car outside that isn’t Kate’s. It’s been here for ages.”

Natasha frowns.

“It’s my car.”

Em frowns. “Why is your car outside Kate’s?”

Natasha looks at Em like she’s a little slow. “Because Clint lives here too?”

“But why the car?”

“‘Cause I drove here from DC.”

Clint blinks, his brain working at about half its normal capacity. “Wait, so when you said you’d arrived from DC five minutes ago, you actually meant five minutes? Like, you didn’t go home first?”

Natasha has the kind of expression on her face that implies she’s suddenly found herself surround by morons. Apart from Kate. Clint thinks Kate has fallen asleep at the table.

“Yes. I thought that was obvious.”

Clint stares at her. Something in the vicinity of his chest is twisting, almost painfully but not quite. Natasha _came to his house_ as soon as she came back from DC. She didn’t even go home. She came straight to his house, to him. Holy shit.

Natasha is blushing slightly, looking embarrassed but also like she’s trying not to smile.

“Yelena isn’t back until Thursday, so…”

Clint can feel the grin bloom across his face, wide and uncontrolled. He laughs, loud and disbelieving, and dumps his coffee on the side before sweeping Natasha into a tight hug, feeling as though something somewhere went wrong. Something got mixed up to let him have this and probably someone in an official uniform is going to turn up one day and demand he swap back, but, until then, he’s going to hold on as hard as he can, so he can look back and remember that at one point he was good enough to be the kind of person Natasha Romanov would drive straight from DC to.

“Dios,” he hears Em mutter. “There’s too much sunshine and sparkles all of a sudden. Take it outside guys.”

Natasha laughs into his shoulder as he kisses the where her neck and shoulder meets.

“Shut up,” he says, his eyes meeting Em’s through the halo of Natasha’s hair. “I know you. You love the sparkles; I’ve seen how you look at Katie. You haven’t got a leg to stand on, Ms America Chavez.”

Natasha shifts in his arms, tucking herself under his chin. He can feel her breath tickle over his collarbone, can feel her smile against his neck, and when he looks up again he can see Kate’s eyes glitter through where her hair has fallen over her face. She’s smiling at him, and he can’t help but grin back.

 

The next few days are spent catching up. And by ‘catching up’ Clint means lounging around in as few clothes as possible, chatting interspersed with make-outs and about as much sex as might be expected for two people who haven’t seen each other for over two months. So it’s a good thing Kate kindly left to stay at Em’s. Both because she probably doesn’t want to see as much of Clint as has been on display for the past couple of days and also because he and Natasha  _might_  have had sex in the kitchen and Kate really, really doesn’t need to know that, because she  _might_  have had a lengthy rant about the last time she found out that it’d happened. But what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her and the fact that Clint’s bruised arm and Natasha’s bruised leg come from falling into the kitchen cupboard door falls into that category.

Speaking of things that people don’t need to know; Clint now knows way more about the internal workings of the French Embassy, and the diplomatic system, than he ever wanted. It’s pretty interesting, but it also rubs up against a lot of politics he’d rather not know just because it makes him despair at the world. Clint already has a low opinion of the world; he was kind of hoping it wouldn’t get lower. But  _Christ_ , some of the people Natasha talks about. Rich, entitled dicks.

“Okay, enough of these depressing stories about important people. Did I tell you about the weird guy at work?”

He can, however, counter with the weirdos he gets at work, of which there are many. Most of them aren’t rage-inducing either, so that’s a plus.

Natasha laughs. “They’re not all bad, but go on.”

Clint’s upside down on the couch in his boxers, because it’s hot and Kate’s not there to tell him no.

“I was finishing up the paperwork for this paint job Logan had done and the guy comes in to pick up the bike. Ducati. Black and red.” He waves his hand vaguely, and Natasha leans against his knee. “Pretty cool actually. So I get him to sign everything and take him to the back so he can get the bike and everything’s normal until he leaves, when he turns to me and goes, ‘Did you hear about the explosion in the cheese factory?’”

She quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Exactly! So I just looked confused or whatever and he goes, ‘It was terrible. Nothing left but debris.’”

“I don’t – ” Natasha starts, but then it clicks. “ _Oh my god_.”

Clint laughs hysterically. It’s still funny, even now.

“I know right? What the fuck?”

Clint’s glad of these days. It’s fucking brilliant to have Natasha around again. She’s just –  _wonderful_ ; funny and sarcastic and smart and just… brilliant. He feels like the luckiest guy in the world just watching her eat cereal, let alone every other thing she does. She’d gotten him some early Russian sci-fi books he’d never heard of before and  _replica_   _First Nation arrowheads_  from the American Indian Museum in DC. All he’d managed was an oversized t-shirt he’d found that said Spell Czech on it. He’d felt kind of lame giving it to her after her epic presents, but she’d laughed delightedly and immediately stripped off to put in on. It was enormous, falling off one shoulder, but she’d grinned like it was the best thing ever. He’d felt less lame after that.

But these few days have just been stopgap, and now he’s pulling up to the curb outside the Detroit Reentry Center – not the parking lot, never the parking lot, because Kate never clears her car out so it can’t be searched for fear of random bottles of tequila stashed in the trunk – to see his brother and Kate’s knuckles are almost white on the steering wheel because they always are. Because she hates this, hates his brother, and tries so hard not to say so every time they come here.

“Clint.”

“I know.”

She’s never come in with him. She says it’s because she’d probably punch Barney if she actually saw him, which is probably true, but he also thinks it scares her and he doesn’t blame her. Clint could have happily gone his whole life without having to set foot in a prison. The first time he came up here, almost as soon as he found out where Barney was and filled with a tentative – and very naïve – idea that somehow he could fix things, he’d almost bottled it as soon as he’d come within sight of the high, razor-topped fences.

“I wish you wouldn’t – ”

“I know, Katie.”

Kate sighs and kills the engine, and for a moment neither of them move.

“You know,” she says eventually, “every now and then, I contemplate refusing to bring you here.”

“Katie – ”

“But I know you’d just blow a load more cash to come here by yourself and I can’t have that on my conscience.”

Clint doesn’t say anything to that. He pays for the entire trip himself – the food and motel and gas and everything, because no one else should pay for Barney’s stupidity – but it would be considerably more expensive without Kate. She is right though; he’d do it regardless. He doesn’t want her to feel guilty about it though.

Kate looks up at him from where she’s leaning her temple against the steering wheel.

“I hate him.”

“I know you do.” He runs his thumb along the edge of his seat.

“I don’t think you do, Clint.”

“Katie, please.”

He doesn’t need this, not now. Visiting Barney is always a trial; anxiety and stress at war with memories of better times. But it’s more than that. Clint still loves his brother. And while that proves to him that love can sometimes be really fucking stupid, it doesn’t make it untrue. He also hates him – for leaving, for selling meth, for getting caught, for ending up in prison. For becoming everything their father said he would. For proving the old bastard right when everything Clint’s tried to do since he was fifteen has been an effort to prove him  _wrong_.

He doesn’t need Kate’s simplified ‘hate’.

“You never let me say this,” she says, sitting up, and Clint sighs.

“Will saying it make this easier?”

“ _Not_  doing this would make this easier, but you do it anyway.”

Clint rolls his eyes.

“I don’t want to argue with you,” she continues, “not today, but I still want to say this before you go in there.”

Kate pushes her hair out of her face, composing herself.

“I remember Barney from when we were younger. I remember how he’d talk, and how you’d talk, and how you’d talk about each other. I didn’t really like him then, but more because he was a bit of a dick rather than anything specific.” She fiddles with the car keys, flicking the little Darth Vader flashlight on and off again. “And, like, he was there.” She waves her hand vaguely. “He was around, and he could be a dick but he’d help you out and get you where you needed. Sometimes. And then he left.”

She looks over at him then, like that would get some kind of extra reaction out of him. Like that’s not something Clint’s had to come to terms with fucking ages ago.

“And… and I dunno what he said to you – if he promised you anything, before or generally – but I know what happened after.”

She reaches across and squeezes his hand. “Clint, I don’t hate Barney because he’s a dick, or because he’s in prison, or because he made really fucking bad life choices. I hate him because he tossed you aside and left you believing that you weren’t worth sticking around for. I hate him because he solidified your belief that you aren’t worth shit. He made you doubt yourself, doubt me, and doubt every single person who has ever been nice or kind or decent to you, up to and including Logan, Jess, Bruce, and Natasha.”

Her voice is firm, brooking no argument. Clipped sentences and bitten off words that make him think of razor edges and sharp drops. This is the Kate that yells at her dad, the Kate who explains privilege to people who should know better, and argues with professors in front of their class. This is the Kate that only surfaces occasionally, the Kate who attended etiquette classes and was born with more money than God.

This is the Kate who doesn’t take no for an answer and will use everything she has to get what she wants.

“You are so much better than he believes you to be.”

Clint’s not too sure what to say to that, so he just sits, awkwardly fiddling with a loose thread in his t-shirt hem until Kate sighs and punches him lightly on the shoulder, her tone softening.

“Go,” she says quietly. “The sooner you go the sooner we can get ice cream. I’ll be here.”

Clint smiles weakly at her and gets out of the car, but, just as he’s about to close the door, Kate speaks again.

“For the record,” she says, leaning across the passenger seat, “I’m proud of you for doing this.”

Clint grins crookedly at her and scrubs a hand through his hair. “You think I’m an idiot.”

“I think you’re a noble idiot,” she replies gently. “And I think you’re braver than I ever would be in your position. Now go. I’m gonna get coffee, but I’ll be in the usual place when you come out. Give Barney a ‘fuck you’ from me.”

Clint snorts out a laugh and shuts the door.

 

The Detroit Reentry Center is about as welcoming as you’d expect a prison to be. The guards are kind of scowl-y and act like they don’t want to be here, but then who does? He shows his ID to the guard at reception and dumps all his shit in one of the lockers before he has his usual pat down and body scan. The woman doing the scan is the same one as last time. She probably doesn’t remember him, but he smiles at her anyway because hey, why not. She gives him a raised eyebrow in return. Clint thinks she did that last time too.

He fills out his paperwork – Clint thinks the fact that he has to do paperwork despite not being the one who’s done anything wrong is particularly sadistic – and gets his UV hand stamp, and is escorted down what feels like miles of corridors, being checked through heavy locking doors every twenty feet or so, before being scrutinised by yet another guard and let into a long, clinically bare room filled with tables set out at ‘safe distances’ from each other.

Just like usual, Clint chooses one of the tables closest to the exit. And, just like usual, he’s surrounded by people much more eager to be here than he is.

Barney is one of the last to be led in. He’s not sure if that’s just luck or if the entire prison can sense how awkward these encounters are and endeavour to keep contact to a minimum. All around them families are happily reuniting, settling in for two hours of catching up and board games and whatever else it is people do in prisons with family members and friends they  _actually want to see_. In contrast Barney sits down heavily at Clint’s table, staring at him in silence which Clint maintains simply because he has nothing to say either.

The first time Clint came here, he’d tried. He’d tried so, so hard. He’d asked what it was like, if Barney was okay, if he’d made friend and was eating okay. He’d offered help, even to get cigarettes if Barney wanted them. Barney had just stared at him like he was a particularly useless dog and didn’t answer, instead asking  _how the hell did you find me?_  and  _did your girlfriend help?_

Kate might not like Barney, but Barney actively _loathes_ Kate.

Barney looks decent enough for a guy in prison, though his maroon prison overalls are deeply unflattering. His hair – darker than Clint’s – is neat and his nails are cut short and Clint wonders why he’s noticing these things until he concedes it’s only so he doesn’t have to look at Barney’s face.

They don’t say hello. They don’t shake hands or really acknowledge each other in anyway. Not for the first time, Clint wonders why the hell he does this to himself.

“Your girlfriend cart you here?” Barney asks eventually and, because Clint is a fucking moron, for a split second he forgets that when Barney says ‘girlfriend’ he means Kate.

“No,” Clint says, confused. “She’s in Virginia.”

It’s only when Barney suddenly looks interested that Clint realises his mistake.

“And you meant Kate,” he sighs, rubbing his hand over his face. Fuck. Barney does not need to know about Natasha. 

“Francis has a girlfriend,” Barney singsongs in the most obnoxious way and, just like always, Clint wants to punch him for using his middle name. “Is she hot?”

Clint gives him a withering glare. Natasha’s fucking gorgeous but there’s way more to her than that. Barney’s enough like their dad for that not to matter though. 

“I’ll take that as a no then,” Barney smirks. “Figures. For all his smarts, college-boy can’t even get a hot girlfriend.”

“Might get a smart one though,” Clint points out. 

Barney snorts. “Like that matters.”

Clint rolls his eyes. 

He wants to feel smug that he’s got all this stuff Barney’s missing; that he has friends, a girlfriend, a future hopefully better than what he’s left behind. That he’s got laid in the past four years. But mostly he just feels depressed. 

Clint watches Barney out of the corner of his eye. Barney’s looking around the room, tapping his fingers against the table. He seems slightly fixated on a family two tables over. A mom and two boys, their dad looking so pleased to see them. The family looks nothing like Clint’s, but he guesses they don’t have to.

Clint doesn’t have many photos of his parents and those he does have tend to be only of his mother, taken by Kate on the old disposables she was so obsessed with when she was eight, but sometimes he looks at them and wonders how much of Barney and himself can be found in them.

Both he and Barney have their dad’s nose. Clint has his mom’s colouring while Barney looks more like their dad. Barney’s stockier, Clint more athletic, though that could have as much to do with their lives now as it has to do with their parents. But it’s not really the physical similarities and differences that occupy Clint, though those are always the easiest to spot.

In his favourite photo of his mom she’s sat on the arm of their overstuffed and ratty armchair. She looks happy, but also like she wishes Kate would point the camera somewhere else. She’s wearing jeans and a lilac t-shirt, and her dirty blonde hair is pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. Clint’s clambering up her back, grinning like a loon, and on her arm, almost hidden by her t-shirt sleeve, is a dark purple bruise.

In the only photo he has of his dad he’s sat scowling at the kitchen table, a tumbler of whiskey held loosely in his hand. He’s wearing a plaid shirt half buttoned and ratty jeans. The photo is actually of Clint, stood to the left of his dad and proudly showing off the pancakes he’d managed to make all by himself. There’s wariness underneath his proud expression though and with good reason; his dad had started yelling shortly after the photo was taken and Clint had taken the pancakes out onto the front step, he and Kate passing a fork between them as they finished them off in tense silence.

Clint sees more of himself in his dad than he does in his mom, though he’s never really been able to explain why. It just feels like his dad sank into his bones, much like the smell of whiskey sank into every corner of his childhood home until it was part of the furniture, his mom not enough to stop either of these things happening.

Kate says that’s bullshit. She says Clint is the best versions of both his parents; that the best thing he got from his dad is his stubbornness because, with everything he’s got from his mom, it means he’ll never end up like his dad. She says Barney got his dad’s anger and his mom’s fear and that’s how he ended up here. She says Clint got his  _dad’s_  fear and it took a long while for Clint to accept that his dad could have been scared of anything.

“Ten years,” Clint says suddenly, because these cycling thoughts aren’t really helping the situation. Ten years since they died; he forgets, sometimes. The only one he’s likely to remember is when he turns twenty-five; more years with his parents dead than alive.

Barney’s gaze snaps back to his, his expression unreadable. Then he grunts. Clint’s not sure he knows what he’s talking about: years without parents or the length of his sentence. 

It’ll be thirty-three, for his brother.

Barney opens his mouth as if to say something and Clint’s eyes meet his. But something in Barney’s gaze shifts, hardens, and he snaps his mouth closed again.

“You bring smokes?” Barney asks instead.

“You didn’t ask me to.”

Barney scowls. “What’s the point of you visiting if you don’t bring smokes?”

Barney’s never asked for cigarettes before. Clint’s not even sure he smokes. They could be used for bargaining, he guesses, but then it’s not like he’d know.

“I can bring some next time,” he says instead.

Kate will not be impressed.

“I need ‘em now.”

“Then you should have asked.”

They both know Barney will never ask.

Silence descends between them and Clint watches the families around them rather than looking at his brother. He thinks this year is worse than the last, but every year is bad for one reason or another so it doesn’t make it anything special.

Clint sighs and stands up. He usually tries to stay for at least a full hour, but sometimes it’s just too much like hard work. He’s made it forty-five minutes today. That’ll have to do.

“Look after yourself, Barney,” he says, looking down at his brother as guards approach to escort them both away. He’s the first visitor to leave, as usual.

“Oh, and I have a message from Kate.” 

Barney’s standing now and he looks at Clint with an expectant expression; he can guess what’s coming.

On the one hand, they’re surrounded by kids.

“She says ‘fuck you’.”

On the other hand, they’re in a prison.

The first smile Clint sees on his brother’s face in almost a year is downright malicious.

“Tell that rich bitch fuck you right back.”

Clint leaves.

The guard that escorts him back is also familiar; a woman with cornrows and thick wrists. She’s about a foot shorter than him and glares at people like she’s daring them to fuck with her. She probably doesn’t recognise him either, but this time he’s in no mood to smile regardless.

They’re almost at the last door when she speaks.

“Why do you bother?”

There’s no particular inflection to her voice, and she’s not looking at him, but he gets the impression that she’s curious rather than judging.

“I have no fucking idea,” he says, rubbing his hand over his face. He feels like he’s done a full night shift in the ER rather than talked to his brother for under an hour.

The guard lets out a quiet, “Huh.”

She takes him back to the reception where he picks up his stuff from the locker, all the while fighting the urge just to run straight out of the building. He’s almost at the door when the sound of her voice stops him. 

“You want to know something you won’t believe?” she says.

“Not really,” Clint says heavily, but he turns to face her nonetheless.

“He your brother?”

Clint nods.

“I think he’s proud of you.”

Clint stares at her, completely poleaxed, with his hand still on the door handle. He stares at her for so long that he almost falls over when someone pulls on the door from the outside.

“If you plan on stopping,” she says sternly, once the other person has passed, “you let that boy know, alright?”

Clint nods quickly and all but bolts before she can fuck with his head any more.

 

Kate doesn’t even bother taking him home, opting instead to drop him off at Natasha's, for which he is incredibly grateful. She’s been great for the four days they’ve been in Detroit, not pushing too much and going along with whatever Clint suggests, just like the other times. But it’s exhausting, and he’s fairly sure that she’s relieved to have someone else to fob him off on when his issues and family shit become a little too suffocating.

He orders her favourite take out, to turn up at their place almost as soon as he’s out of the car. Kate deserves all the nice things. Clint is always a little disappointed in himself when he can’t get them for her.

Natasha welcomes him with warm hugs, the news that Yelena _still_ isn’t back – she suspects a new boytoy – and amazing gourmet pizza from a place on West Liberty Avenue that Clint is ashamed to find he’s never heard of before. She then manhandles him into bed and wraps herself around him without once asking about anything more important than what Detroit attraction he visited this time. He’s fairly sure he hasn’t been so grateful for her existence for the entire duration of their relationship.

Jess flies back to London the day after Clint gets back from Detroit. He doesn’t really want to extract himself from Natasha's embrace, but he still goes to see her off at the bus terminal at ass-crack in the morning. She’s already said he doesn’t need to come but they’ve finally got to a place where they can talk and not feel awkward and he doesn’t quite want it to end. Jess gives him a hug and says she’ll be in touch, and then Clint stands on the sidewalk with Jess’ friends James and Jacques and watches as the bus takes her back towards DC.

That evening, back at his place, Clint picks up his ringing phone without looking and is surprised to find Carol on the other end, asking him if she can finally get back to being his friend now all their bullshit is sorted. Clint laughs, because that’s such a Carol greeting, and they spend a couple of hours chatting about Clint’s degree and Carol’s Air Force training and all the hot men on base.

“No, ‘cause seriously. There’s this one guy, Sam. He’s from DC, went to UDC. Hot as fuck and flies like a dream. And then, _and then_ , my SO is this guy James Rhodes, and _oh my God_. I want to ride him like a pony.”

Clint cracks up laughing.

“I fear you’re insensitive to my problems, Barton.” Carol says, and he can hear her grin down the phone.

“Nah, I’m just confused why people are forever telling me about the hot guys they meet.”

“Oh there are hot girls too,” she says, “I’m there, remember?”

And Clint cracks up laughing again.

So now Clint can call Carol whenever he wants without her feeling like she has to cut him off, admitting that she was Jess’ friend first and therefore automatically on her side. Which is fantastic because, apart from the fact that Carol drinks too much and Clint ‘not enough’, they’re both just the right level of loud, inappropriate and shambolic to get on like a house on fire.

Which means he’s got Carol back as a friend as well as Jess, to go along with his growing friendship with Steve and Bucky, and the ability to finally call Natasha his girlfriend – in the privacy of his own mind if not out loud. And on top of that, he’s not starting in the ER right off the bat once lectures have finished. Everything’s good.

So of course something throws a spanner into the works.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which both the past and the future are discussed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: discussion of the following; violence, childhood physical and emotional abuse, alcoholism. Also contains money issues and something that comes close to an anxiety/panic attack. None are graphically detailed but still, please look after yourself. If you need/want clarification, message me (franztastisch.livejournal.com).

“Hey Clint, how was your summer?”

Doctor Bruce Banner has been Clint’s personal tutor since Clint started at Culver and he’s well aware that he lucked out. Jess’ personal tutor – who’d tutored both biologists and med students – had been apparently chronically uninterested in his students and never any help when problems arose. Bruce, on the other hand, is clever, supportive, and determined to ensure students get the best out of their university experience. He’s also chilled, funny, and can start stories with ‘when I worked for Médecins Sans Frontières in Kashmir’, which helps.

“Eh, not bad,” Clint replies, sitting down in the chair in front of Bruce’s desk. “Worked a lot.”

“Your scholarship come through okay?”

Unfortunately he can also cultivate the kind of silence that ends with you spilling your guts, so along with Kate and a social worker back in Iowa – and Jess now, to a far lesser extent – Bruce is one of the few people who Clint has told about his childhood. Not everything, mind, but more than he tells most other people.

“Yeah, just a couple of days back.”

“Good.”

They chat about Clint’s clinic placements, his coursework, what he’s thinking of specialising in, and the seminars that are currently being held. Seminars about patient confidentiality, hospital process and medical law, and including workshops where students from the drama department come and call everyone ‘retard’ and ‘fucking niggers’ to get people used to dealing with those less-than-delightful members of the American public.

“And they’re going alright? I remember I hated them, mostly just because you _knew_ they were coming. If it happens to you in a hospital it’s unexpected but you deal. These workshops,” Bruce waves his hand, “they’re necessary and everything, but you know they’re coming. It was the anticipation that got to me.”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “They’re going alright. But obviously we cycle through all of them. I got an alcoholic today, which was fun.”

Clint scrubs a hand over his face. The drama kid they had doing that one obviously didn’t _really_ know what a violent alcoholic acts like, something Clint is really fucking pleased about, both because it made it much easier for Clint to deal with and because, well, it meant the kid had never come into contact with violent alcoholics.

Bruce looks sympathetic but, to Clint’s eternal gratitude, doesn’t ask if he thinks he can hack it. Clint knew this would be hard when he started, but he’s not going to be able to help people if he can’t face his own fears first.

“Okay good,” Bruce says, leaning forward a little. “Now I want to talk to you about something else.”

Clint frowns slightly.

“You do all your rotations at Cassie Lang, right?”

“Yeah.” Clint draws the word out, failing to see where this is going.

“And this is due to transport and monetary constraints that prevent you from getting hospital placements in Radford, Blacksburg, and Roanoke.”

“Yes.” And God, always with the fucking ‘monetary constraints’.

“Okay.” Bruce rubs his temples and shuffles some papers on his desk. “I want you to hear me out, because I think this will be really, really beneficial to you; for your medical degree, but also for _you._ ”

Clint can feel apprehension creeping up his spine and he’s fairly sure he’s not going to like whatever Bruce is about to say.

“I want you to think about applying for a summer abroad placement.”

“No,” Clint replies immediately, because no fucking way. He doesn’t have the money to commute to Blacksburg, where the fuck is he going to find money to live abroad for two months?

“The department can help you fund – ”

“I’m not taking any more money.”

“It would help – ”

“No.”

There’s a brief silence in which Bruce looks as though he’s trying not to snap at him. In a distant part of his brain Clint’s a little ashamed that he’s not listening – not even letting Bruce get a word in edgeways – but no. No way. He’s not going to work for this, for the fantastically impossible idea of being able to work abroad for a while – _live_ abroad for a while – only to have it pulled away because of monetary _fucking_ constraints.

“You promised to hear me out,” Bruce says eventually.

“I did no such thing.”

They stare at each other, Clint itching with the need to leave.

“Just think about it,” Bruce says finally. “It was good to see you, Clint.”

Clint grabs his bag and bolts for the door.

He doesn’t want to think about it. He absolutely doesn’t, so of course he it’s the only thing he thinks about for the rest of the day; all through his lunch in Kirby Lee Ditko, all through his workshop where a girl from the drama department only speaks Urdu to him (and where he gets a commendation because he isn’t getting anywhere and eventually just asks Raiyan, the only person he knows who can speak Urdu in his class, to act as interpreter. And apparently that shows ‘initiative’ and ‘understanding of your limitations.’ Ha. Fucking limitations again), and all through his bike ride home. Endless cycles of ‘I can’t afford it’ and ‘it would be amazing’ and ‘I’m a shit’ and ‘having no money is the worst’, which ensures that when he comes home, he’s in about the lowest mood he could possibly be in.

So of course Kate and Em are watching _The Emperor’s New Groove_ and Bruce has sent him an email that essentially begins with ‘You didn’t let me finish so…’ which Clint promptly ignores.

Instead Clint sits down at his desk and drops his head into his hands.

He could work weekends at Logan’s. That’d maybe cover it. But then if he worked weekends he’d have to drop archery and DeafSoc and he doesn’t want to drop either. Dropping them would save him the member’s fee, not that it’s much, but Kate would probably kill him and dropping DeafSoc would also mean he’d lose the only place he regularly uses ASL. Plus he wouldn’t see Maya all that much, which would suck. Working weekends would also cut down his study time and he’s working ER second semester, so when would he even sleep?

And where would he go anyway? It’d have to be an English speaking country because he can’t speak anything else – well, apart from ASL but there’s no country with ASL as an official language – so where would that leave him? Canada? What’s rent and food like in Canada? Flights? Or there’s the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand. South Africa? Probably more to be honest, everyone speaks English these days. But still. He can’t fly to the other side of the world, the UK and Ireland are probably expensive, and, not to perpetuate any stereotypes or anything but with his luck, he’d probably get killed in South Africa. And what the fuck is the point of going 200km north to a country mostly like his own? Why pay for a passport if that’s all you’re going to do with it?

Fuck. He’d need to get a passport. And probably visas and customs shit and _fuck_. Why is everything _so expensive?_

Clint throws himself onto his bed and stares blankly at the ceiling.

Everything would be so much easier if he didn’t live in this little bubble that helps him forget that he’s _shit poor_. If he lived in a crappy studio apartment with a mattress and one working hob instead of a nice house where he doesn’t pay rent because it’s _Kate’s house_   with Kate’s huge flat screen TV and Kate’s leather couch, and Kate’s double bed, and if he mentions trying to pay rent again Kate might actually stick a fork in him.

He only applied to Culver because of this house. He only applied to college because of Kate Bishop and all the money she spends that her dad hardly notices is missing. Sometimes it feels like there’s never going to come a point where Kate isn’t paying for _something_ in his life.

And he wanted to go to college _so badly;_ wanted to get the fuck out of Iowa and be _better._

Clint scrubs his hands roughly over his face in an effort not to punch something.

Fuck this shit.

“I’m going to Natasha’s,” Clint says, almost slamming the door on the way out of his room, because nothing says ‘good boyfriend’ like carting your shit over to your girlfriend’s house.

“You okay?”

Kate’s concerned face pops up over the back of the couch.

“No,” Clint snaps, because right now he’s angry at Kate even though that’s _completely irrational_ , and then, “Yes, I’m fine. I’m leaving.”

“Clint – ”

Clint closes the door on her voice.

 

Because Clint isn’t a _complete_ idiot, he doesn’t actually visit his bad mood on Natasha – and anyway, she’s probably still on campus, doing research assistant-y things for the Language Department. Instead he cycles around, letting the cool fall air clear his head somewhat. He cycles almost out to where Thor lives then circles back, going through campus and bumping into Kamala who talks a mile a minute before shyly asking if he can direct her to the comics shop Bucky and Steve work at.

He offers to bike her over, craning his head around her where she perches on his handlebars. Bucky greets her like a long lost friend and Clint is immediately ignored in favour of a conversation about the comic Steve and Bucky are trying to get off the ground; a dystopian climate disaster something-or-other set in East Africa or maybe India. Clint has no idea.

But it does the trick, and by the time he cycles to Natasha’s he’s almost happy; humming off-key to himself and wondering just how you would go about smuggling water to slum areas – damn those two and their weird comics ideas.

“Oh hey, солнышко, I’ve actually got something for you,” Natasha says as soon as she opens the door.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, here.” She drops a key into his hand.

“And this is…?”

“Front door key. For here. I have one for your place, now you have one for mine.”

Clint and Kate hand out keys to their place like candy. Em has one, Billy and Teddy have one, Jess probably still has one. There’s a spare at Logan’s and at Thor and Jane’s. Natasha was given one by Kate after the piñata party, along with Steve and Bucky, with the parting shot of, “as long as you don’t steal our shit or _prank us Patrick I’m looking at you_ feel free to pop in. Barton won’t always be dressed, but that’s not a deterrent for everyone,” and they’d all looked at her like she was mad.

Clint thinks Kate’s so casual about the place because it’s her dad’s and somewhere inside she wants it to get trashed just to piss him off, but Clint doesn’t mind because having people traipse in and out of his home is something he’s _very_ used to. And at least now they’re people he likes and who won’t hurt him, which is nice. It reminds him he has friends.

He’s never been given _someone else’s_ key though. Well, apart from Kate’s.

“Oh.”

“Yelena doesn’t mind. I asked. So feel free to drop by whenever.”

He stares blankly at the key for a moment before grinning up at her.

“Is this a subtle way of angling for a ‘surprise’?” he says, exaggerated finger quotes and all.

Natasha bursts out laughing. “Well, I wouldn’t say no, but Yelena is home earlier than me most days so unless you’ve got something to tell me I think that’s gonna backfire.”

“Ha. Yeah, no,” Clint says, taking out his keys to add Natasha’s to his Hunger Games key ring that Kate got him as a joke. “Ain’t interested if it’s not you.”

“Aw,” she says, smirking and sliding her hands around his waist. “You say the sweetest things.”

“I try.”

Natasha just hugs him for a moment and Clint is close to getting to the point where his legs turn to jelly and he melts into her, but then she pulls back with a smile.

“I’m too tired to cook so how about pizza and a shit movie? I bought Men in Black for $2 on my way back from work. What d’you think?”

Clint smiles and lets her go. “Sounds good. Though I can cook if you want.”

“You can cook?” Natasha says, raising an eyebrow.

“Why is everyone always surprised by that?” Clint says indignantly. “Sure, I can cook. First life skill I ever learned. _Kate’s_ the one who’s shit at cooking.”

“First life skill?” she says smiling over her shoulder as she walks into the kitchen. “What? Before tying your shoelaces?”

And Clint can’t quite bring himself to tell her ‘yes’ – because what kid learns to cook for themselves before learning to tie their shoes? Kids with shitty childhoods is who – and while he’s fairly sure he’s going to tell her that whole sorry saga at some point, he’s not ready for it yet. He’s fairly sure she suspects something close to the truth anyway; she’s not stupid.

“Well, second then,” Clint lies. “Chilli okay? You seem to have everything.”

“Chilli’s fine,” she replies, sitting at the table and ogling shamelessly as he bends to pull pans out of the cupboard. “Thanks.”

So Clint manages to avoid talking about, and almost manages to avoid _thinking_ about, Bruce and his suggestion for at least three weeks, instead throwing himself into his first rotation at the hospital and crashing at Natasha’s at least three nights a week.

But it never really goes away. There’s always this niggling feeling in the back of his mind that maybe he _could,_ that there’s a way to do it, if only he could see it. But after his visit to Detroit he’s conscious of how much money he _doesn’t_ have and there are birthdays and Christmas coming up, plus he needs a new second gear for his bike and a new cable for his laptop. It bothers him more than he realises – this sudden reminder of how little he can do – and it becomes this extra background pressure that makes everything harder. He’s more stressed at the hospital, his temper is slightly shorter, and archery doesn’t provide quite the distraction it used to. He feels as though a door has opened and he can see all the can-never-be paths his life could take, and it _hurts_. Especially living with Kate, because of course it’s not her fault, but she can go to the movies and she can go out to dinner and she can buy new DVDs and clothes, and sometimes she doesn’t even realise how lucky she is to be able to do any of it.

 

Kate’s in the shower, so Clint is trying and failing to beat Em at Crash Bandicoot. When Em beats him for the seventh time in a row Clint throws down the controller in defeat.

“Fine! Fine! I concede you are the master at Crash Bandicoot.”

“Damn right,” Em says, grinning. “Another race?”

“No,” Clint says, crossing his arms and scowling. “I’m trying to retain some dignity.”

Em rolls her eyes. “Might be a little late for that, chico.”

Clint sticks his tongue out at her, because Clint is an adult.

“Really helping your case there, Barton.”

Clint snorts and slumps back into the couch cushions. The Crash Bandicoot music plays on repeat as Em drops her controller and pulls her feet onto the couch, curling up to face Clint.

He finds the way she’s looking at him slightly unnerving.

“What?”

“Are you alright?” Em asks, uncharacteristic concern written lightly on her features.

“What?” Clint repeats, because really?

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, elongating the word in confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Em stares at him a little longer before replying.

“You know, people still think of me more as Kate’s girlfriend than as your friend. Which figures, I guess, but still.”

“Okay?”

“It means that people will ask me things that they probably wouldn’t ask Natasha or Kate.”

Clint has a bad feeling about this.

“And as a result of this, I want to ask you if you’re alright.”

Clint just stares at her.

“I’m fine,” he says eventually. “Really.”

Em stares at him some more before rubbing between her eyes in frustration.

“I – ” she starts, before stopping and frowning.

“I’m not – I’m not the Clint Whisperer,” she says eventually. And _fuck you Em_ , because what the hell does that mean? He’s not a fucking _feral animal_ or some damaged moron who needs kid gloves. Clint scowls and opens his mouth to complain, but Em butts in almost immediately.

“No, wait. Let me explain. That wasn’t the best phrasing but it’s still… true. Relevant. Whatever.”

She leans forward.

“Look. I don’t – ” She blows out a breath and starts again. “In my head there are two Clints, okay? There’s you, the guy I know, and then there’s Pre-Culver Clint, who I don’t know. You don’t talk about him and Kate doesn’t talk about him. That guy is a blank space to me.”

Clint opens his mouth again, but Em holds up her hand to stall him.

“No, this has a point, I promise. Just hear me out. I don’t mind that I don’t know Pre-Culver Clint. I want to say that right now. Whoever that guy was, you don’t need to tell me about him. I know you, and you’re awesome and that’s enough for me. _But_ knowing Pre-Culver Clint is sometimes very important to understanding _you_ , okay? Kate knows, so Kate understands. The ‘Clint Whisperer’.”

She curls her fingers around the words to make sure Clint knows she doesn’t mean it badly. It sort of helps.

“I don’t know, so I don’t quite understand. But I want to understand, okay? I want to understand as much as you’re willing to tell me.  But that’s not the point right now. The point is, something is off, with you right now. You’re not telling Kate, you’re not telling me, and I’m guessing you’re not telling Natasha either.”

Clint doesn’t say anything to that. There’s a defensive rage in his chest, but it’s warring with exhaustion and the wish to simply _not_ fight.

Maybe this is just what he wanted. He just wanted someone to _notice_.

It’s a feeling he thought he’d be better at recognising.

“So I want to ask you once more,” Em says, as the shower shuts off. “Are you alright?”

There’s a couple of minutes of silence. Clint stares at Em almost unseeing as he runs through all the possible answers to that question and Em stares right back. Kate bursts into the room in a whirlwind of wet hair, lavender scent, and white towels before disappearing into her room, kissing Em on the cheek as she passes.

Clint learned something when he was nine: if someone looks hard enough to notice when they don’t have to, it means they care. Clint let Kate in before he even realised he was building walls to keep people out and here is Em, knocking on the door and asking for entrance. And there’s attics and basements and dusty rooms with rusted locks, but… well, he doesn’t have to show her those quite yet.

With a jolt, Clint realises that even without having told Natasha this particular thing, she’s probably standing in his front room or something.

And this metaphor is terrible. It’s a good thing he never took English.

“Bruce thinks I should apply to a study abroad this summer,” Clint says, head tipped back and a hand over his eyes. “I can’t afford it.”

“But you want to go.”

“Yeah,” Clint says just as Kate bursts back into the room.

“Wazzup, bitches!” she hollers, dumping herself straight into Em’s lap.

“Hola linda,” Em says smiling, kissing her briefly. “Beating Clint at Crash Bandicoot has made me hungry and I fancy Chinese from that place on Pine.”

“Pick somewhere else,” Kate says dismissively. “They don’t deliver.”

“Going to pick it up will use some of this freakish energy your magical shower has bestowed upon you. It’ll do you good.”

Kate frowns. “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

“So I can continue my illicit affair with Clint and his penis, yes.”

Clint’s head snaps up in alarm as Kate burst out laughing.

“That is,” she says grinning madly, “by far the worst lie you have ever told. And I believe it deserves Chinese. The usual?”

Em nods and Kate kisses her again before hopping up and grabbing her car keys. Clint frowns at her; she is _ridiculously_ chirpy.

“Adios suckers!”

And Kate slams out the door.

“How did you manage that?” Clint says, wonder colouring his tone. “I can’t convince her to pick up take out _ever_.”

“Orgasms open many doors,” Em says smugly.

Clint laughs. “And you can keep them.”

“I am planning to,” she says smiling. “For as long as humanly possible.”

Clint smiles at her for that. She’s so good for Katie. They’re so good _for each other_. He wants them to get married and have adorable babies and die together in their nineties.

“You could have just said,” Em says after a moment.

“Huh?”

Playing dumb sometimes works.

“ _Clint_.”

Just not this time. Clint shrugs.

“Clint,” Em says, gentler this time. “You could have just _said_. We can help. Kate – ”

“I don’t want Kate’s money,” Clint interjects immediately.

Em frowns at him. “Let me fucking finish, Barton. And stop jumping to conclusions.”

She tucks herself back into the couch.

“Kate,” Em says patiently, once she’s got herself comfortable, “knows people. _You_ know people. _I_ know people. Clint, you have friends with good jobs and good connections. _You_ have great grades and tutors who’d back you up. Denying yourself something others would willingly help you get is masochistic and stupid in the long run.”

Clint opens his mouth to protest again – because yeah okay, that might be true, but the weight of debt on his shoulders is getting heavier all the time – and Em practically snarls at him.

“ _Let me fucking finish_.”

She blows out a breath before continuing.

“More importantly though,” she says eventually, “and I can’t believe I have to point this out to you, you have _international students as friends._ ”

Clint blinks at her.

“Dios mio,” Em mutters to herself. “Clint, I have family in Mexico who can help you find a placement. Natasha can probably help you find placements all over Europe, Kamala would probably help you find one in Pakistan, you’ve just made up with your British ex-girlfriend. For fuck’s sake, Thor _worked in hospitals in Norway_ and Logan probably knows people in Canada. Your friends have connections. We know people who can find you cheap places to stay. If you ask, we will help. We’re _students_ , Clint. We _know_ about trying to keep costs down. You have connections, you have friends. _Use them_.”

Clint feels as though his brain has shut down, a sort of white noise that doesn’t allow for comprehension.

The one major flaw with Em is that she lacks patience and for all Clint maintains that he doesn’t need kid gloves, patience is a must when dealing with him. He knows this. He doesn’t like acknowledging it, but he knows. The amount of restraint she’s shown throughout this conversation – the fact that she’s only snarled at him once  – proves to Clint that she both means this and cares about him. And he’s listening, he really, really is. But it feels too good to be true.

He sort of doesn’t want it to be true, because losing it would hurt so much more.

“I’m – ” he says, and then stops. And he can tell Em knows what he’s going to do even before he says it. “I’m going – out. Just… out.”

Em sighs.

“Okay, chico. But I’m going to tell Kate, okay? And you need to think about it. And tell Natasha.”

Clint gives a jerky nod and bolts for the door.

“There’s nothing wrong with needing help, Clint,” she says just before the door closes.

 

Clint gets to the small park near Natasha’s before he realises that he’s left his keys and phone back at his. There’s a brief moment where he considers going back for them, but Kate will have gotten home by now and he’s not sure he wants to explain why he left until he’s calmed down a little first.

This is it. The obvious answer he’s been looking for. Just, now he’s got it, he’s not sure he wants it.

The thing is, Clint’s life has been one person helping him after another: his mom helped him when he was young, doctors and CPS helped him when things were really bad, and Kate helped him, with ASL, with his archery, with his bike. Helped him though the worst time of his life and doesn’t hold his shitty behaviour from then against him. When he aged out of the foster system Kate helped him more, with jobs and college applications and a place to stay. She gave him money and somewhere to live. And now, here at Culver, he gets grants and loans and a scholarship.

He’s twenty-one. He should be able to do this by himself by now. He wants _something_ that he’s managed to do, all by himself.

And, if he’s honest, he doesn’t want other people to know just how dependant he is _on_ help.

Clint sighs and rubs his hand over his face, looking around to take stock of where he’s ended up while he wasn’t paying attention.

He’s on Natasha’s street. Because of course he is.

Clint hesitates. If he goes to Natasha’s, she’s going to ask him if he’s alright. But then if he goes to any of his friends’ places he’s going to be asked if he’s alright because that’s what friends _are_ ; people who’ll always want to know you’re alright and help you if you’re not. So your options are either always be alright, let them help, or be fucking miserable.

Clint is sick of being miserable.

He walks down the street and knocks on Natasha’s door.

“Hey Yelena,” he says, as soon as she opens the door. “Is Nat in?”

“Don’t you have a key?” she replies, ignoring his question.

Clint shrugs and laughs a little.

“Left it at mine.”

Yelena looks him up and down. If she asks if he’s alright, Clint will be officially worried, but she says nothing other than yelling over her shoulder to Natasha as she steps aside to let him in.

Natasha comes out of the her room still half-dressed in her work clothes – her nice blouse and pencil skirt looking slightly incongruous when paired with the fluffy penguin socks she’s wearing.

“Hey you,” she says with a smile, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“Hey,” Clint replies, dropping a kiss in her hair. “You good?”

“Better now you’re here,” she says, smiling wide. “C’mon. One of Yelena’s shows is on soon and I promised she could watch it in here.”

She pulls Clint into her room and Clint sits on her bed as she takes pins out of her hair and begins to undress.

“So,” she says. “How is the world of Clint Barton?”

“Eh, so-so,” he replies, tipping his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Early morning rotations are the worst. Still, it means I get free afternoons. Also means I’m tired by – ” he digs into his pocket to check the time on his phone before remembering that he left it back at his, “ – whatever time is it now.”

“Half seven,” Natasha supplies as she starts unbuttoning her blouse.

“Hmm…” Clint says, his brain snapping back to his conversation with Em.

“Are you alright?”

 _There_ it is.

Clint shrugs. “Been better.”

He feels the bed dip and turns to find Natasha, wearing a black pencil skirt, a nude bra, and fuzzy penguin socks, kneeling beside him. Fuck, but she’s gorgeous.

“What’s wrong?”

Clint doesn’t answer. Instead he just stares at her. The skirt she’s wearing has ridden up, exposing her thighs, and the waistband has pushed up, making one of those rolls of skin between it and the bottom of her bra that people seem convinced is unattractive. But Clint sort of wants to touch it, because it proves she’s real. Real and here, rather than some weird fantasy where people are perfect and never get broccoli stick between their teeth. Or whatever.

“You’re beautiful, you know that right?”

Natasha smiles at him. “You’re avoiding the question, but thank you.”

“It’s my super power,” he says, because that’s his thing now.

“Really though,” she says, running her fingers around the shell of his ear.

“It’s dumb.”

“If it’s worrying you this much, it’s not dumb.”

Clint picks at her bedcovers for a moment.

“Bruce wants me to apply for a study abroad placement for this summer and I can’t afford it,” he says, all in one breath and not looking at her.

Natasha’s hand runs up into his hair before running down his neck and arm and circling around his wrist.

“C’mon,” she says, tugging gently.

“What?”

“This is important, so we’re going to be comfortable,” she says, tugging him off the bed and gently undoing his jeans until he gets the hint and takes over, stripping down to his boxers as Natasha changes into sleepwear.

“C’mon,” she says again, pulling back the covers and ushering him under before climbing in herself.

“Okay,” she says, once he’s removed his left hearing aid so he can lie down more comfortably and she’s tangled her legs with his. “You want to study abroad for a couple of months and you think you can’t afford it.”

“No,” Clint says, “I _know_ I can’t afford it.”

Natasha smiles and kisses him quickly.

“Do you know the requirements?”

“For what?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “For the placement.”

Clint shrugs awkwardly. “I never looked.”

“Okay. So first up, find out what the requirements are.”

“But – ”

“Clint, if you don’t know what they want, you can’t make sure you have it.”

“They want _money_.”

“But that’s not all they want.”

“Yeah, but it’s the bit I definitely don’t have.”

“I just – ” Natasha sighs. “Play hypotheticals with me Clint, okay?”

Clint frowns slightly but doesn’t refuse.

“So besides money, what do you know you’ll need?”

“A hospital,” Clint mumbles. “A place to stay, flights, a passport, visas and shit, umm… transport costs?” Clint can feel that horrible panicky feeling coming on again. “Food. Um… I – ”

His voice catches.

“I don’t know,” he whispers eventually.

Natasha’s wraps her arms around him and kisses him again.

“Alright,” she says softly, her breath ghosting over his lips, “a scenario then. Go to Bruce – no wait, listen,” she says, a hand coming up to cover his mouth and silence his protests. “Go to Bruce. Ask what grants towards flights and stuff you can get. We get you a placement in a hospital in Rome. My aunt and uncle are placed there at the moment, you can stay with them, no rent. I’m sure they won’t mind. Take or get a bike when you’re there – no transport costs. If you eat out, you pay for it but otherwise it’ll be covered by my aunt and uncle. A passport is a useful thing to have so just think of it as an investment and visas are just… necessary.”

Clint doesn’t say anything, his brain stuck on the fact that Natasha has basically just offered him two months’ rent-free accommodation with people he’s never met and who don’t know she’s offered.

“That’s just one way of doing it,” she continues when he still fails to respond. “America could probably do something similar in Mexico if you asked. Or… your friend Thor? Didn’t he work in hospitals in Norway before moving here?”

Clint closes his eyes against Natasha’s open expression.

“I just want to be able to do _one thing_ without asking for help.”

Natasha pulls him closer, tugging him until he can tuck his head under her chin.

“You got a full ride to an out-of-state college all on your own, солнышко,” she says quietly. “And there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”

“I hate being poor,” Clint whispers into her collarbone.

“You know what you do then?” Natasha says. “You take every opportunity to become the best possible version of yourself. You do this because it’ll make you happy and because it’ll make you a better doctor and better doctors get paid more. Take the opportunities, Clint.”

Clint doesn’t say anything to that, choosing instead to simply breathe in the scent of Natasha’s detergent and focus on the feel of her in his arms.

“Or,” she says after a moment, a smile in her voice, “marry someone rich.”

Clint snorts out a laugh. “You offering?”

“I’m not rich.”

Clint shrugs.

“Maybe one day though.”

Clint draws back far enough to give her the full force of his sceptical eyebrow.

“One day what? You’ll be rich enough?”

He knows that’s not what she meant – but he doesn’t want to think about what it does mean. He knows, and she knows he knows, and she lets him get away with it because she’s wonderful.

“Yes, Clint,” she says. “Exactly that.”

 

Clint only gets to the hospital on time the next day because Natasha remembers to put an alarm on for him. He doesn’t have time to go home to get his phone, keys, or scrubs though, so he turns up in his jeans and borrows some scrubs from the questionable locker in the staffroom.

He gets back to his around four in the afternoon to find Kate working from home – which he was kind of hoping she wouldn’t be. But all she does is hug him tight before saying, “I thought I told you to tell me when stuff like this happened, Clint.”

Clint shrugs and avoids her eyes.

“You don’t mind that Em told me, do you?” she asks, worried.

“No,” Clint says quickly, “she said she would.”

“That’s not the same.”

Clint shrugs again. “Easier though.”

Kate looks hurt.

“I don’t – ” Clint says quickly. “I don’t mean I didn’t – It’s not _you,_ Katie. I just… I didn’t want to… say it more than… you know. And… and I trust Em to be… you know. Honest. So.”

Kate nods, but she doesn’t look any happier.

“I just…” she says, trailing off slightly. “I just want – I want you to feel you can tell me anything,” she says quietly, avoiding Clint’s eyes.

Clint reels her in, hugging her tight.

“I can, Katie,” he mumbles into her hair. “I do. It’s just… Em blindsided me and I sort of… freaked out. You – if I’d done it in my own time, it’d be you I’d’ve told first. Promise.”

She nods but doesn’t let go, and for the longest time they just stand in the front room, hugging.

“You gonna let me help?” she says eventually.

Clint can’t quite bring himself to say ‘yes’ even though he means it, so he nods instead.

“No money though,” he says.

“Okay, Christmas presents then.”

“Katie…” he says warningly, pulling back to look her in the eye. “I mean it.”

“Oh come on, Clint,” she replies, a small smile on her face. “Who doesn’t want visas for Christmas?”

 

The whole thing isn’t brought up again after that, not by Kate or Em, or by Natasha and certainly not by Clint. But for all that Clint has a feeling that the three of them have had some kind of powwow about it. He’s not sure why he gets the feeling really, there’s just the strange air of _knowing_. That kind of feeling you get when people are trying to hide something from you. Nothing bad, more like a surprise present or trip or something.

Clint leaves them to it. The only contribution he himself makes to the situation is to sheepishly turn up during Bruce’s office hours to ask about requirements and grants. Bruce has the good grace not to make a big deal of it, but Clint can tell he’s pleased, which Clint finds weird; what does it matter to Bruce if Clint goes abroad for the summer? But for some reason it does.

Due to Clint’s ‘circumstances’ he actually qualifies for a lot of financial aid, probably enough to cover both the international fees and part of the flights. Depending, of course, on where he ends up.

“What are your options?” Bruce asks.

Clint scrubs his hand over his face.

“I don’t know. I’m… I’m going to ask friends. See if anyone can… you know.”

“Get you in as a favour?”

“I guess… Well, no. More like – someone I can stay with to make it cheaper. You know.”

Bruce nods.

“If you need a hand on that front, let me know. But also look through the booklet. All those universities have ties to Culver in one way or another. They’re often your best bet.”

 

Apart from that one meeting with Bruce, Clint doesn’t really talk about the whole thing with anyone. Natasha makes some comments and Kate makes references to ‘organising it, don’t worry Clint, I’ll let you know when I’ve worked something out,’ which he decides to listen to (the other option being to get freaked out by the mountain he has yet to climb), but otherwise life goes on much as it did before. He still wakes up horrendously early for his rotation at Cassie Lang, he stays over at Natasha’s, gets beat by Em at video games, and goes to archery on Sunday mornings with Kate. He manages to cram in a couple more visits to DeafSoc than he usually does and even picks up the odd shift at Logan’s.

He’s well aware he’s just staving off anxiety attacks by keeping busy but it’s working so far, so he doesn’t stop.

 

Winter descends on Culver like a blanket and Clint goes from being able to go out in just his hoodie to breaking out the Hawkeye hat within about two weeks. He feels wrung out; exhaustion, anxiety, and the cold all battling with his need to keep busy. He’s running on empty and he knows it, but he keeps going because the other option isn’t something he ever wants. It all comes to a head at the end of November though, when Clint starts looking into how to go about applying for a passport and discovers that he has absolutely none of the documentation required as proof of identity.

He stares at his laptop.

“Fuck.”

He drops his head into his hands, feeling tears burning behind his eyes.

“ _Fuck_.”

He looks back at his laptop, the childish hope that something might have changed in the past two seconds dashed as he looks at the requirements again.

“Jesus fucking… _Goddammit!_ ”

Clint has the brief, overwhelming urge to throw his laptop against the wall. This was _just_ what he knew would happen. There was no way he’d actually be able to study abroad for the summer. His life just isn’t that peachy. Fucking _figures_.

He surges to his feet, tipping his chair over to land with a loud crash _,_ sending the notes stacked by his bed flying and shattering a glass that’s been left on the floor.

He really needs to punch something.

“Clint?” comes Kate’s worried voice through his closed door. “Are you okay?”

Clint doesn’t say anything, still fighting the need to throw things at the wall.

“Clint!”

“I’m fine,” Clint manages to reply, but his voice rasps over the words, betraying him.

Kate barges into his room. “Yeah, ‘cause you really sound – What the fuck? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Clint says shortly. “I’m going to the gym.”

“Yeah, no.” Kate says, blocking his exit. “What’s up?”

“Katie…”

“No really. You look like you’re two seconds away from tearing up your room. _Finishing_ tearing up your room.”

Clint doesn’t say anything, opening and closing his fists as hurt anger courses through his body. He wants to punch something. He wants to punch _Bruce_. Fucking… giving him this fucking _idea_ and then… he knew it couldn’t happen. He fucking _knew_.

“Barton…”

“I’m going to the gym,” he grinds out low and angry. Punching a bag won’t get him thrown out of college, unlike punching Bruce. He tries to force himself past Kate, but she doesn’t move. Fucking archery muscle.

“Move, Katie,” he growls. “I need to fucking… _punch something_.”

His muscles are locking up; so much anger and adrenaline rushing through his body that he’s starting to hurt. He needs to relax. He needs… he needs…

“I need a drink.”

Kate was immovable before, but now she’s a rock; five foot eight of athletic muscle and stubbornness shot through with concern.

“No,” she says, hard and brooking no argument.

Clint’s pushing against her now and Kate’s hands are flat against his chest.

“I _swear to God_ , Katie…”

“No!” snaps Kate, and with a sudden burst of strength she manages to force Clint far enough back into his room to slam the door shut behind her. “I made a promise, Clint! You made me promise. I’m not going back on it. Not now, not ever.”

Now there’s no immediate escape available Clint’s stood rooted to the spot, locked up so tight he’s shaking.

“I don’t fucking care!” he yells.

“Well I do!” Kate yells back. “You’re my best friend and I _promised_. We’re not going back to that. I won’t let you.”

“What gives you the fucking _right_ …!”

“You did!” she shouts. “After too many bottles of shit whiskey when you were fourteen _you gave me the right!_ Or have you forgotten how that day panned out?”

And like a rubber band snapping, the fight drains out of Clint’s body so quickly he stumbles. Because for a brief, horrible moment, he _had_ forgotten. He’d forgotten what he’d done that day, after more whiskey than he could handle, after vomiting until he hurt, after he’d cried and bloodied his fists on trees and screamed at the sky. _After,_ when a thirteen year old Kate Bishop had come to drag him out of the mud, to make sure he’d not poisoned himself or passed out. To make sure that he wasn’t _dead_.

When he was too drunk and too angry and too hurt, and in thanks for her concern he’d punched her in the face so hard he’d broken her nose.

“Fuck,” Clint whispers. “ _Fuck_.”

There’s a static rushing in his head, and a self-loathing so acute it almost drowns out the weird feeling of incomprehension at how he managed to _forget_ that.

His knees give out and he manages to drop awkwardly down onto the bed just before he has a full-blown… _something_ attack. Anxiety. Panic. Something. Something he’s never really had since that day, when the red mist had lifted enough for him to see Kate’s shocked expression, tears welling in her eyes and blood streaming from her nose.

“Oh my God,” he wheezes. “Oh my God, I – ”

He’s gulping in air, partially because he’s panicking and partially because he’s trying not to cry.

“I – Katie, I’m – sorry. So sorry. I didn’t – ”

He hasn’t cried since then, he hasn’t and he isn’t going to start now. He’s pressing his hands so hard into his eyes that colours are bursting – lurid pinks and greens – all across his vision.

“ _So fucking sorry_ ,” he chokes out.

“Hey, hey,” comes Kate’s gentle voice as she pulls him into her arms and tangles them both together on his bed.

“You’re alright,” she says into his hair. “It’s alright. I forgive you. I forgave you then, I forgive you now. You’re alright, we’ll be okay. Shh, Clint, you’re alright. You’re alright, Clint.”

And she rubs his back and whispers comfort and forgiveness into his skin until exhaustion claims him and he falls asleep.

 

Clint wakes up sometime around midnight feeling achy and awful and worse than he’s felt in a long, long time. He rolls over, noting how he’s now properly in bed with his shoes off and his hearing aids out. God, the shit Kate puts up with. His mouth is dry and his face tight, and he briefly debates ignoring both those things before hauling himself out of bed in search of a glass of water. He sort of wants to find Kate again and just… sit with her, let her breathe next to him. But she’s probably sleeping or with Em or something and he decides he’s not going to be that pathetic.

But Kate’s not in her room, she’s curled up on the couch in her PJs. Clint stares at her.

She opens her mouth to say something before clearly remembering that she removed his hearing aids and he won’t really be able to hear her. _If you needed me_ , she signs instead, _you wouldn’t have come looking_.

Clint feels something in his chest break loose; something like love and shame and gratefulness all rolled into one.

“Where’s Em?” he manages to force out, not even having the energy to raise him arms to sign. She should be here, making Kate’s evening less shitty.

_I asked her to go home._

Clint doesn’t say anything to that. Can’t, because he’s too tired and to wrung out and he’s not supposed to be making Kate’s life _so fucking difficult_.

“Why can’t I do this on my own?” he whispers. And it’s not an accusation; it’s a question. Why? Why can’t he? Why is it so hard? Everyone else he knows does perfectly fine being an adult, dealing with adult decisions and adult commitments. Why is it just him?

“Clint,” he sees her say, as she gets off the couch and comes to hug him. “No one wants to do _anything_ on their own,” she says loud enough for him to hear. “No one should have to.”

After a while she draws back.

_Clint? I think you should take the rest of the week off._

“But I – ”

 _Get mitigating circumstances_ , Kate cuts in with quick hands. _Get Bruce to vouch for you. You’re running on empty. You can’t do this to yourself. You can’t maintain this pressure. You need to rest._

Clint doesn’t say anything to that. He knows she’s right, knows that he’s finally done it, finally crashed headlong into the wall, but if he doesn’t go in he’ll have to _think_. He’ll have to confront all those problems and worries he’s studiously _not_ been thinking about.

Kate taps his arm to get his attention. _Do you want me to – ?_ Kate signs, before gesturing back to his room. And Clint knows that question, that expression and that tilt of the head. The last time they shared a bed was after Jack, when being alone was too much for Kate to cope with and Clint refused to let her suffer alone. He has no intention of pretending that this is anywhere near as bad as what happened then, but he doesn’t want to be alone either.

Clint nods jerkily before mumbling, “Water,” and shuffling into the kitchen.

When he comes back Kate is sat on the edge of his bed.

 _I’ve switched your alarm off_ , Kate signs as they shuffle into bed, _and if anyone rings, I’ll deal with it. We’ll go to Bruce whenever you wake up tomorrow. And then we’re going to –_ she cuts off abruptly before starting again. _I’m going to lay out the options I’ve worked out, and we’re going to work through whatever triggered this and we’re going to be alright._

Emphatic hand movements; we _will_ be alright.

_Okay?_

“Don’t you have a seminar tomorrow?” Clint asks quietly.

_Fuck it._

“Katie…”

“You are more important than any degree I will ever get,” she says, loud and firm. “Fuck it.”

And normally there’s a note of teasing when Kate says things like that; no less honest, no less true, but the sentiment softened with a lilt that says _isn’t it funny_? There’s nothing like that in her tone now and the honesty of the statement _burns_.

Clint swallows and nods and says, “Same here.”

 

Clint wakes up at midday the next day to find Kate and his phone gone. He feels exhausted and listless, and it takes him ten whole minutes to convince himself to get out of bed and about the same for him to get his hearing aids in because his fingers don’t want to work.

He’s also starving and really wants coffee, but making food, coffee, or even just chewing seem like far too much hard work right now.

Kate is working in the kitchen and she has coffee ready. Because Kate is perfect.

“The hospital rang around half four,” she says as Clint shuffles into the room. “I apologised and said you probably won’t be in for the rest of the week and mitigating circumstances should be winging its way to them by tomorrow.”

Clint nods and drinks from the pot, because Em isn’t here to yell at him and Kate might indulge him just this once.

“Jesus Barton, _a cup_ please.”

Or maybe not. He reaches for a cup.

“Well, it’s too late _now_ ,” Kate huffs and Clint manages a smirk.

“How are you feeling?” Kate asks after a while.

“Shitty.”

“I bet. You should eat something.”

He’d argue but he’s too tired, so instead he makes himself breakfast – the proper kind with eggs and bacon and fucking _sausages_ – and has a shower so he’s halfway human by the time Kate bundles him into her car and drives him over to the Ross Hansen Building. They grab mitigating circumstances forms from Karen at the office and manage to grab Bruce just before he goes into a first year lecture. Bruce looks like he wants to apologise for something, but Clint doesn’t let him; it’s not Bruce’s fault that Clint is shit at being an adult.

Bruce agrees to vouch for him regardless, though he does point out that Clint also needs a medical slip before he can hand the forms back to Karen. The thought of telling his problems to anyone who isn’t Kate makes him itchy and uncomfortable but Clint is too exhausted to argue, so makes his way over to the nurse’s facility and says the bare minimum required to get a note, feeling like he’s eleven and lying to the school nurse again.

By the time they’re done it’s dark again and Kate agrees to postpone serious conversations in favour of shit action movies and sleep, for which Clint is eternally grateful. So they watch _Die Hard_ and Clint taps out around half ten, which would make him feel lame if he wasn’t still absolutely exhausted.

The next day starts mostly the same, Clint clawing his way to consciousness around eleven. Apart from this time there’s a note from Kate attached to the coffee machine saying she’s invited Natasha over and will be staying at Em’s tonight and _serious talk tomorrow Barton don’t look at me like that it won’t be terrible._

It’s a surprisingly long note.

Clint tries to do work and fails miserably. Then he tries to look into further funding options but is greeted immediately by the passport application page he forgot he had open in his browser and remembers that it’s not worth it. So instead he takes himself off to the archery range and fires arrows in the cold until his brain shuts up and he can’t feel his fingers.

He comes home to find Natasha curled up on his couch.

“Apparently you’ve had a shit couple of days,” she says, once he’s collapsed next to her on the couch.

“Yeah.”

She pokes him with her toe.

“I shall forgive you for not telling me this time, but for future reference; you let me know, okay? None of this ‘not replying to my texts’ business.”

“You texted?” Clint asks surprised and Natasha frowns. But before she can say anything Clint realises something.

“Wait, where _is_ my phone?”

He pats himself down and when that doesn’t reveal his phone to him, he goes to his room to rummage around all the likely places. No dice.

“I think,” he says, dropping back onto the couch, “Kate has run off with my phone. Sorry.”

“And you didn’t notice ‘til now?”

“Didn’t want to talk to anyone ‘til now.”

“Not even me?”

Clint looks up at her, sat on his couch with her legs tangled up with his.

“I always want to talk to you,” he says honestly.

Natasha is quiet for a moment, just stroking her thumb over his ankle.

“Why didn’t you call me then?” she says eventually.

Clint opens his mouth to say something, but realises he doesn’t know what and closes it again. He looks away, shrugging.

“Hey,” she says quietly, shaking his leg slightly to get his attention. “You’re not going to scare me away.”

Clint looks up at her sharply and she must be able to see the doubt and uncertainty in his expression, because he doesn’t have the energy to hide it right now. And maybe that means he shouldn’t be around people until he’s built up his defences again, but it’s too late for that now. He feels rubbed raw and wrung out; too tired to hide and too run down to want to. And this is _Natasha_. He’s wanted to let her in since she dropped the subject at Smokey Joe’s and, as terrifying as he finds that, he feels like it might be worth it – like ripping off a band aid, so there’s someone else who understands; someone other than Kate.

He feels like his brain is trying to tie itself in knots and he’s scared that if he opens his mouth every horrible, terrible, rotten thing about him is going to come spewing out and she’s going to _leave_.

But –

“Hey, hey,” she says, soft and soothing, twisting until she’s kneeling between his thighs, hands lying warm and solid on his thighs as she drops a kiss on his lips. “You don’t – it’s okay, yeah? Whenever you’re ready.”

Clint drags in a shuddering breath as Natasha’s brings a hand up to gently trace the outline of his ear before coming to rest against his jaw.

_You’re not going to scare me away._

“Ask,” he forces out, so quiet he could have said nothing at all.

“What?”

“Ask,” he says again, trying in vain to quell the panic that one word is causing. He wraps his hand around her wrist, pressing his face into her palm.

“Ask what?” Natasha says quietly.

“Anything,” he forces out. “Everything. Nat, Tash – just – ”

She’s smoothing her hands over his hair, holding him close, and this can’t be comfortable for her because she’s still in her work skirt, but she’s not moving away.

“I don’t – ” she says, and for a horrible moment, equal parts crushing betrayal and overwhelming relief, Clint thinks she’s going to refuse; to say this was a mistake, that she can’t carry his crap, that she has to leave. But instead she says, “Tell me something true.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t – I don’t know the question so… tell me something true.”

Gently she tilts his head so he has to look at her and for a moment neither of them say anything. Clint’s teetering on the edge of a cliff and he hopes, under all his panic, that she’ll be there to catch him when he flings himself off. But he can’t know until he does it.

“When I was ten my dad hit me so hard I lost my hearing,” he says, and Natasha’s eyes widen and her hands tighten and _she’s catching him_. And suddenly, Clint’s childhood pours out of him like a waterfall.

He tells her about the first time his dad hit him for spilling his whiskey; he was six and it was an accident. He tells her about seeing his mother black and blue, about the broken arm aged seven and the broken collar-bone – the same one she’d traced after their meal at Smokey Joe’s – aged eight. He tells her about the smell of stale alcohol and how it permeated every corner of his home growing up. He tells her about the fear and reluctance to go home; about his father’s harsh words, barely soothed by his mother before they’d start up again. About his brother’s growing recklessness and his mother’s increased despondency and how he felt like he was supposed to keep them together, but he wasn’t _strong_ enough, wasn’t _big_ enough, wasn’t _good_ enough to do so. How his father spent all their money and his mother had to work all the time, so Clint had to learn to cook, and clean, and lie with a straight face before he was eleven.

How sleeping in the hospital was the safest he felt at night.

How it all changed when he was twelve, when his father, past the point of incredibly drunk, drove himself and Clint’s ghost-of-a-mother into a tree.

Distantly Clint realises he’s crying, and for all he promised himself he’d never do that again, that he’d be better and stronger than that, it doesn’t feel _wrong_. So he continues, through hitching breath and Natasha curled around him. He tells her about the group home, the bullying and the anger and the downward spiral of self-loathing and pain. How he was twelve and good at lying and could get whiskey with frightening ease.

Clint tells Natasha, so quietly that she must have to strain to hear him, about how he became his father and hated himself for it more than he’d ever hated the man himself.

But through it all was Kate; Kate with a stubborn frown and kind words, who learned ASL with him, and paid for his archery membership against her father’s wishes, and quietly replaced bike parts when he got drunk and fucked it up.

Who was there when Clint was fourteen and woke up to find his brother had left him behind like an unwanted toy, maxing out of the foster system and disappearing into the Great American Interior, leaving his younger brother to rage against the injustice of being abandoned by the last of his family.

Kate, who forgave him with blood pouring from her broken nose.

“I don’t get why she’s still here,” he says quietly. He doesn’t really get why Natasha is still here either, but he doesn’t say that out loud.

Natasha’s work shirt is damp and the tips of her fingers, where she’s been stroking under his eyes, they’re wet too. Clint’s right arm is completely dead and he suddenly realises that he’s both hungry and incredibly uncomfortable.

Natasha kisses him so gently he hardly feels it and his chest lurches horribly.

“Because you’re not your father, Clint,” she says quietly, and when Clint looks at her he sees that her face is wet too; her face is red and her mascara smudged and her eyelashes clumped with water.

Clint looks away again.

“I mean it.”

Clint doesn’t say anything, instead curling back into Natasha, stretching and shifting until he’s tucked so close he can’t really be sure which bits are him and which are her.

Natasha says something in Russian, but it’s quiet and made indistinct by the angle of her head and his hearing aids. Besides, his Russian hasn’t improved any since dating her. He should probably work on that.

“Huh?” he says quietly, because he’s talked her ear off and if there’s something she wants to say he should hear it, should see if he can help.

Natasha pulls back, or at least attempts to, but Clint’s arms tighten around her. He doesn’t want to lose contact with her yet. So instead she turns her head just enough to look him in the eye and Clint is so busy trying to pull the blue of her eyes into focus that he almost misses it when she speaks again.

“I love you,” she says, almost over enunciating to emphasise the words.

Clint’s brain shuts down.

He must look so dumb, gaping at her with eyes wide. But she – did she – ?

“C’mon,” Natasha says after a moment, wriggling out of his arms to sit up. “I’m hungry and I think I’ve split the seam of my skirt, and anyway I need to change and… Will you stop looking at me like that? It’s not that weird.”

Clint is stuck somewhere between crying again and laughing hysterically. “Yeah, it really is.”

“Why?” asks Natasha.

“What?”

“Why is it weird that I love you?”

Clint can’t answer that, mostly because he can’t think of a good reason that isn’t _because I’m not worth it_ but partly because he’s stuck on the shape Natasha’s mouth makes when she says ‘love you’.

“Why do you?” he says instead; quiet, not confrontational.

“Because,” she says primly, as she pulls her skirt down so it sits properly, “you are funny and hot and awesome. Because you once snorted Coke out of your nose because you were laughing too hard. Because your Gollum impression is terrible. Because if I do _this_ ,” and Natasha suddenly digs her fingers into his side and fucking _tickles,_ and Clint yelps and tries in vain to twist out of the way, “you do _that_. Every. Single. Time.”

She smirks at him.

“Because you are an excellent fuck,” she says and Clint grins at her a little, because yeah, everybody wants to know that they’re a good fuck really.

Her smile widens and she stands up to strip off her skirt.

“Oh that’s better,” she says, closing her eyes and smoothing her hands over her stomach before looking back at him, her smile softening into something much closer to fond.

“Because,” she says, “after a shitty day at the French embassy you said, ‘Do you want me to come over?’ and when I said, ‘Remember the part where I’m in DC?’ you said, ‘Eh, I’ll work something out’.”

Clint shrugs at that. Anyone would offer that, it’s how you show you care, and he’s fairly sure there are enough buses between Willowdale and DC for him to manage it.

“Also,” she continues, grinning at him while pulling him up from the couch, “because you’re going to make me dinner.”

Clint laughs a little at that. “Oh, am I?”

“Yes, you are,” she says smiling as she heads for his room, probably to dig out some of his sweatpants to wear. She does have clothes of her own here, but she very rarely actually wears them.

Clint scrubs his hand over his face. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“And Clint?” she says, and Clint turns to see her at the door to his room. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For telling me.”

 

The next morning Clint wakes up to Natasha’s alarm feeling better than he has the previous couple of days. The heavy despondency has lifted somewhat and he manages to get a few solid hours of work done before he gets bored and decides to cycle over to the gym where Em works.

Horrible as it was, telling Natasha about his pre-Culver days, in the aftermath he feels so much better with her knowing and he’s known Em longer than he’s known Natasha. He owes it to her really.

He leaves before he can talk himself out of it.

Em is between classes when he turns up – she runs women’s self-defence, boxing, and a bunch of other things as well as acting as a personal trainer for people – and she looks sort of magnificent all sweaty and flushed.

“It’s a shame you don’t like dick, Chavez,” Clint says as soon as he’s close enough to ensure the entire gym doesn’t hear him.

Em turns at his voice, her arms folded and her eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

Clint laughs. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.”

Em takes another swig of water from the bottle Kate got her. Kate periodically attacks it with permanent markers, so it says things like PUNCH EVERYTHING and F**K THE PATRIARCHY on it. Clint’s not allowed near it because the one time he was he drew hearts with arrows through them and Em punched him.

“Any particular reason you’ve come to harass me at work?”

Her tone is harsh, but her eyes betray her amusement.

“Um, yeah,” Clint says, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Is – is this a bad time to expand upon my long-standing emotional problems with you?”

He’s aiming for levity to cover his apprehension, but he’s not sure it works.

Em’s eyebrows shoot up.

“What?” Clint says defensively.

“Is this – _now_?”

“If it’s okay with you?” Clint is sort of regretting this decision right now.

Em narrows her eyes suddenly. “Who forced this on you?”

“What? No one! I wanted – I just… I owe you, okay? And I… talked to Natasha last night and – she didn’t like, say I should, I just… you know…”

 _Feel I can face it now_ , he doesn’t say.

Em fixes him with a calculating stare for a moment longer before nodding once.

“Yeah, okay. Now is fine. I’ve got half an hour.” She leads him through the gym to the offices at the back. “But for the record: you don’t owe me jack.”

“But – ”

“Nuh-uh. If you want to tell me, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s fine too. I meant what I said last time; you’re awesome. I don’t need to know anything more.”

She leads him into a cramped office stacked with files and dumbbells, glaring at anyone who looks like they’re planning to interrupt.

“Okay, shoot,” she says as soon as the door is shut.

Clint is suddenly at a loss. He really should have worked out what he was going to say beforehand.

“I, um. Possibly didn’t, er… Think this through?” he says sheepishly.

Em rolls her eyes, but her expression is fond.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she says, smiling and moving to lean against the table. “Just give me the CliffsNotes version.”

For a moment, the words won’t come. Clint has never actively planned to tell anyone this stuff; sat down and thought through what to say and what to leave out. Never thought to sanitize it, or abridge it. And there’s still the horrible panic he gets whenever he thinks about this, about telling. He’s spent too long not saying for that feeling to ever go away.

But this is Em. Kate’s probably going to marry her or something. She deserves his trust in this.

Clint opens and closes his mouth a couple of times before settling on, “My dad was an abusive alcoholic who cost me my hearing before driving himself and my mom into a tree. I was then stuck in a group home that was,” – Clint laughs slightly hysterically – “beyond awful. And then my brother fucked off and left me for Detroit and ten years in jail.”

When Clint feels he can look back at her Em has a slightly gobsmacked look on her face as if whatever she was expecting it wasn’t something that bad.

“I’m also really fucking poor,” Clint adds somewhat awkwardly, because hey, she knows but sometimes it bears repeating, “and have,” – how did Jess phrase it? – “a tendency towards alcohol dependency.”

There’s silence for a moment before Em just says, “Oh.”

Clint snorts. “Yeah, ‘oh’.”

“ _Mierda_ ,” Em mutters, gaze drifting unseeingly around the room, and then, “ _Jesus_ , Clint.”

Clint’s gaze snaps to hers at that; she calls him chico and she calls him Barton, but she almost never calls him Clint.

They’re silent again then, Em’s expression suggesting she’s re-evaluating past interactions and coming up with different answers.

“I don’t – ” she says after a while, “I’m not saying I – like, _understand_ or – or anything but…”

She frowns, looking about as uncomfortable as Clint feels. America Chavez does not do ‘mushy stuff’. In that respect she and Clint are very alike.

“That’s – it’s not the same but it’s… kinda the reason mom left Mexico.”

Clint nods in understanding before screwing up his face in confusion. “Wait, which mom?”

Em has three women who get the title ‘mom’. Kate jokes that Em uses ‘mom’ the same way as Indian families use ‘cousin’; they’re all relations, but unless you know the specifics, you’re not really sure _how_.

“Oh, um, Amalia.”

“Ah, okay.”

“Yeah she… Abuelo – um, my granddad – wasn’t physically abusive but, you know, emotionally. Dad… well, dad was the one who organised it, getting out. Abuelo was never going to take mom coming out well, but she wanted to tell him anyway and, well, dad had the escape plan. And, you know, it turned out pretty well.”

Clint knows Em’s dad is her biological father and he knows he was married to Amalia, Em’s biological mother, briefly – presumably for immigration purposes. But considering Em’s biological parents’ relationship is, according to Kate, very much like Clint and Kate’s own and Amalia apparently always knew she was gay, Clint has never quite felt he can ask how it was Em came to be born. They could have easily got into the States without a child. Maybe at the time it was the only way Amalia thought she could have kids.

“I guess… It seems far away now but it’s…”

Em trails off, looking uncomfortable.

“If my family now is anything to go by,” she says eventually, “you’ve got a good future ahead of you.”

They’re silent for a moment, the only sound being the occasional clank or grunt from the gym goers from the other side of the office door. It’s weird; Clint doesn’t necessarily feel lighter after telling Em, not in the way he did after telling Natasha but… he does feel sort of relieved. He thinks he might tell Kate that if Em asks anything about it she’s allowed to answer. He and Kate have an unspoken agreement that any personal information has to come from the person in question and no one else. It’s why Clint never told Jess that Kate is bi, and why Em hasn’t known anything about Clint’s pre-Culver days until now. Both Clint and Kate spent their childhoods with people talking about them behind their backs. Now that they can control what people know about them slightly better, they take every opportunity to do so. Though it’s not so much about control of information as it is about trust.

“Thanks,” Clint says eventually and Em shrugs in a way that suggests she’s happy they’ve talked but can we please stop with the feelings now? She then fiddles with her water bottle for a while before asking if Clint wants to join her self-defence class and, when he points out that he doesn’t have any gym clothes with him, she promises to dig up something decent from another instructor who’s (thankfully) rather anal about keeping his stuff clean. Clint would have to wash it before he gave it back (as if he _wouldn’t_ , honestly Em) but the other guy would be fine with it.

So Clint spends an hour being Em’s punching bag for her women’s self-defence class, followed by Em wanting to know how much he can bench – a surprising amount for someone who doesn’t actively care about such things. Archery is good for some things, it turns out – and Clint wanting to know if Em can do press-ups with him sat on her back. Which she can, just about.

All this means that they’re late enough back to Clint’s for Kate and Natasha to have ordered take out without them and Clint and Em find them camped out on the couch chatting about Russia and the Ukraine. Clint and Em exchange a look, rolling their eyes before having a furious scuffle in the hallway as to who gets the first shower, which Clint wins by the ungentlemanly tactic of tripping Em up.

 

“Okay!” Kate exclaims as soon as Em sits down, fresh out of the shower. “We have pizza as a distraction so I think this is the perfect time to bring this up.”

Clint gets stuck with pizza halfway to his mouth as Kate turns expectant eyes on him.

“What?”

“We have options for you. And, because Natasha snooped on your laptop, we also know what you were freaking out about. So we also have options for that.”

Clint turns a slight frown on Natasha, but she looks unrepentant.

“You don’t like explaining and I figured this would make it easier,” she says.

Clint hesitates, and then nods. “Please just… ask next time though.”

“Kate makes it sounds more… clandestine that it was,” Natasha says gently. “I just saw the tab open when I checked my emails last night. It seemed… worrying at first glance but, well, Kate worked it out for you.”

“Yeah?” Clint says hopefully.

“Yeah, Hawkeye,” Kate says fondly. “Pro tip: always call the relevant government agencies before freaking out. Frances Barton – “

“You did _not_ ,” Clint says, horrified.

“ – had a very pleasant conversation with Olivia from the US State Department this morning. And of course I did,” Kate says grinning, as Natasha and Em suddenly look _way too interested_ in this piece of information and _Clint hates Kate Bishop so fucking much,_ “because it was the only way to find out how to get you a passport. I am very good at lying, you know. Or at least pretending you’re a girl.”

“Frances?” Em says.

“Clinton Francis Barton,” Kate says gleefully and Em and Natasha look entirely too happy.

“Shut up,” Clint groans.

“Nope, no can do,” Kate continues, “because I have answers. In short, you can get a passport pretty easily, but you and me have to go to DC. So I propose a road trip in January.”

Clint stares at her a moment. “Why do you have to come?”

“Because you can’t drive. And, if need be, I can verify your identity, though Olivia said it sounded like _Frances_ would have all the paperwork required anyway. _But_ , more important than that, we,” Kate waves her hand to encompass Em and Natasha, “have placement options for you.”

The three of them then proceed to lay out on their little coffee table everything they’ve worked out over the past couple of weeks.

Ana Sofia, one of Em’s moms, has family in Mexico City who would be perfectly happy to put him up for two months. Elena, one of Em’s other moms, has a cousin who works in a big hospital in Rio de Janeiro. He wouldn’t be able to put him up, but he has a friend with a spare room in his flat. Kate had talked to Thor, who was very enthusiastic about getting him into the University Hospital of North Norway and probably having him stay with a friends of his – “A woman called… Sif?” – and apparently Yelena could get him a place to stay in Moscow. Natasha says she’s talked to her aunt and uncle and they’re perfectly happy with her idea of him staying with them in Rome and she has people she could ask in Dubrovnik and Paris if he wanted her to.

“We were hoping Kamala could help too,” Em says, ignoring Clint’s utterly pole-axed expression at this sudden barrage of information. “And she can, sort of. She says her family in Karachi probably wouldn’t be happy with you staying with them – unrelated, white, non-Muslim male that you are – but she says she can try and get in contact with an aunt in Dubai. Apparently she’s the black sheep of the family; smokes, drinks, and married to a South African she met in her wild twenties. Kamala is pretty sure she wouldn’t mind you staying with them in Dubai.”

“And before you ask,” Kate butts in, “we didn’t tell Kamala it was you. We didn’t tell anyone it was you. Kamala guessed because she only knows so many medics. Thor, obviously, figured out it was you.”

“Yelena knew, probably because I wouldn’t ask for anyone else,” Natasha adds. “She sort of likes you.”

“Sort of?” Clint says faintly, because obviously _that’s_ the important part of this whole conversation.

“She likes that you don’t insult her TV habits.”

“Oh.” Clint didn’t think not commenting on Yelena’s love of terrible reality TV constituted as a proper reason to like someone, but whatever.

“There was one other person we asked,” Kate says after a while, like she’s worried about his reaction.

“Who?” Clint asks. He’d’ve thought they’d basically got everyone by now.

“Jess,” Kate says.

Clint stares at her. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard. I thought you just said Jess.”

“I did.”

“You asked my ex-girlfriend, who I’ve only just started talking to again after a year and a bit because we broke up under less than great circumstances, if she minded putting me up in London for two months.”

“Yes,” Kate says shortly.

“Right,” Clint says, “and how did that go down?”

“She said basically what you just did and then that she’d think about it.”

Clint frowns but doesn’t say anything more. It would be beyond awkward to stay with Jess; at least, that’s what it feels like right now. Plus, there’s Natasha. Would that be shitty of him? He doesn’t know. Maybe going to Rio would be better. Or Rome.

“So what do you think?”

Shit.

“I – ”

What does he think? He thinks that his friends are better than he deserves. He thinks this is too much. He thinks, suddenly, that he can’t do this. The reality of leaving the US, even for just a couple of months, is suddenly slapping him across the face. He’ll probably get murdered in Rio. London is expensive and he can’t speak Italian and he’s a shit doctor really – who the fuck would want him? And then everything would go wrong and Kate would be a continent away. Natasha wouldn’t be there and Em wouldn’t be there and Thor couldn’t come and beat gym equipment up with him. He’d be _alone_ and he’d freak the fuck out and then all this effort would be wasted.

Natasha kisses him on the frown lines he knows are marring his forehead.

“The inside of your head must be terrifying,” she says quietly. “All these little traps and pitfalls and corridors that circle back on themselves.”

She rubs her hand through his hair and his eyes fall shut automatically. He feels the couch shift and imagines Em looking away. Urgh. Mushy stuff.

 _You don’t have a leg to stand on, Miss America Chavez_ , he thinks, and barely suppresses a hysterical giggle.

“We’re not asking you to decide now, but,” and here Natasha kisses him again, “don’t freak out before you’ve thanked Kate for her hard work.”

There’s a smile in her voice, clear as day, telling him that she’s not mad. That it’s just a gentle reminder that there’s something here that isn’t about him.

“Fuck, Katie,” he says, opening his eyes and looking at her. “Sorry, sorry. I just – ” He casts around for a moment, as if there’s a more meaningful way of saying this, before settling on the tried and tested, “Thank you” because what else is there to say, really?

“Anytime, Hawkeye,” Kate replies with a fond smile.

There’s more Clint wants to say, but he doesn’t know how. It’s overwhelming, the care and support, and he’s just… It still feels new.

Kate glances at both Em and Natasha, hesitating before signing, _There are so many people who want to help you, you know._

Because Kate will always, always, _always_ know him better than anyone.

 _It feels weird,_ he signs back, as honest as he dares.

 _You’re gonna have to get used to it_ , she replies. _Apparently people like you_.

“No es muy amable excluir a alguien, ¿sabes?” Em interrupts teasingly, to which Natasha adds, “Совсем некрасиво,” with a kiss just under Clint’s ear. He doesn’t know what either of them actually said, but their meaning is clear nonetheless. He drops his hands in embarrassment and he and Kate mumble simultaneous ‘sorry’s.

“Don’t worry about it,” Natasha says, as Em waves away their apologies and begins to gather the sheets of paper with all of Clint’s placement information on it.

“When’s the deadline again?” Kate asks.

“End of February,” he says as Em shoves the assorted printouts into his hands.

“Okay, you have just over two months to work it out then. We’ll organise going to DC for early January, probably just after the Christmas holidays. Et voilà! You’ll have a shiny study abroad placement.”

Kate grins big at him. “Now, enough serious shit. Who wants to watch a movie?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are presents and paperwork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay guys. This is going about 200% more slowly than I was planning. But like I said at the beginning, I _will_ finish this, never fear. Updates will remain slow though, thanks to RL and laptop issues. Thanks for a your patience!  <3

It’s late December and Clint’s flying out with Kate to Des Moines this afternoon, but currently he’s curled under the covers with Natasha. Really, if he’s honest with himself, he’d rather spend his whole Christmas here. Apart from the fact that the food wouldn’t be as good (he can cook, but not  _Christmas dinner_. When would he ever have had enough money to buy a turkey?) it’d be a winner all round. No Kate’s dad, no too-large house, no frosty conversation and pervasive feeling of distaste. He’d be a little sad not to see Kate’s sister Susan – they’re not exactly _friends_ , but she’s nice and she cares about Kate. Plus he found some earrings for her that he thinks she’ll like – but that’d be more than made up for by the whole being-in-bed-with-Natasha thing.

And now he’s sad, because that’s not his Christmas plan.

Natasha snuffles into his hair, pulling the cute face she does just as she’s waking up.

“Morning,” Clint says quietly.

“Mmm,” she replies before slinging her arm over his chest. “Morning.”

“Flying today,” he says quietly, after just watching her breathe for a while.

Natasha grumbles and tightens her hold. “Don’t wanna.”

Natasha speaks proper English at all times, in the way that only someone who has been taught English as a second language can. But in the early mornings she slips up. It took him a while to realise why it sounded familiar too; her fake-American accent sounds like his and Kate’s, as if the Midwest has soaked into her by association. The caveman part of Clint is stupidly happy about this. 

Clint snorts out a quiet laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

They’re quiet for a while, Natasha’s breath ghosting across his collarbone, but then she shifts and pokes him in the side.

“You got in touch with Jess yet?” she asks quietly.

Natasha has asked a variation of this question every day for the past month or so. Really, Clint should have just done it to stop the questioning, but...

“Mmm no,” he says and Natasha sighs.

“She’s your best option,” she says, like she does every time.

“Yeah.”

And she is; a placement in an English speaking country complete with someone to help you navigate it? Clint should have flights by booked now. But on the other hand;  _Jess._

“Promise me you’ll have talked to her by the time you come back to Culver in the New Year,” Natasha says. “You have to have  _some_  idea of where you’re going before we go to DC for your passport.”

“We?” Clint asks. He’d thought it was just going to be Kate and him.

“Road trip,” Natasha says, kissing his sternum. “Em’s coming too. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t promised.”

Clint doesn’t say anything.

“Clint,” Natasha says, slightly admonishing, as she sits up to look him in the eye.

“It’s just  _weird_ ,” he says. “Don’t you find it weird?”

“Why would I find it weird?”

“Well, she’s my ex-girlfriend.”

“And?”

“You don’t find that weird?”

“That you have ex-girlfriends?” Natasha says, not so much deliberately missing the point as ignoring it completely. “I’d think it weirder if you  _didn’t_ have ex-girlfriends, or I’d have to entertain the possibility that the entirety of Culver’s straight female population is blind.”

Clint blinks at her rather stupidly for a moment, before electing to ignore that comment.

“Right.”

Natasha smiles at him and props her chin on his chest. “No, Clint. I don’t find it all that weird. Jess was lovely when I met her and being friends with exes is good, if you can. Plus, going to London would be such a good opportunity for you. And London’s a wonderful city. You’d enjoy it.”

She runs a hand through his hair, over his ears, under his chin. “ _And_  I could come and visit you and we could… oh, I don’t know. Walk in Hyde Park and go to a drag show in Soho.”

“Meet the Queen,” Clint says.

“Is that in reference to the drag show or the actual Queen of England?” Natasha says with a smile.

“Can’t we do both?”

Natasha laughs. “Yeah, we can do both. Soho is fun. Nice bars, though that won’t really appeal to you.”

Clint scrunches up his face. “Isn’t Soho full of – ”

“Sex shops? Yeah.”

Clint pulls slightly on the loose collar of Natasha’s sleep t-shirt. “Lots of sexy lingerie.”

Natasha swats his hand away, laughing. “You and lingerie. You have a fetish.” 

Clint blushes and shrugs slightly, careful not to dislodge Natasha. “Yeah, well.”

“Aww, you’re blushing.” Natasha grins and pokes him in the side.

“Well.” He shrugs again and curls his fingers in the ends of her hair. “You know when guys talk about what they like in women? Like, physically. Legs or ass or... I dunno, pretty noses? And that’s fine, until there’s me, feeling like some 50s douchebag because I like… you know…”

“Tits and ass?”

“Basically.”

Natasha smiles. “Well, you’re not a douchebag, so I am quite happy to indulge you.”

Clint grins back, sliding his hand up the back of her t-shirt and drawing her down for a kiss.

“But,” she says breathlessly, when she manages to pull away for more than a second at a time, “sexy Soho lingerie is entirely dependent on you  _calling Jess.”_

Clint groans dramatically. “Don’t mention exes when I’m kissing you,” he whines. “It  _ruins_ the  _mood_.”

“Well,” Natasha says, her smile turning impish as her hand slips into his pyjama pants, “we can’t have  _that._ ”

 

Clint ends up not promising Natasha anything in regards to calling Jess but, two days into his stay at Kate’s, Kate’s dad makes a scathing comment about  _prospects_  and Susan says  _Kate says you’re studying abroad next summer_  and Clint is sufficiently shamed into action. He’d think Kate had orchestrated the whole thing if it weren’t for the sniping argument she’d subsequently had with her father about it.

Yelling matches are a bit of a staple at Christmas with the Bishops. In fact, the whole thing is a trial. As predicted, the food is good and seeing Susan is nice, but everything else about it is pretty terrible. If Clint wouldn’t feel like he was imposing he’d suggest that they go to Em’s next Christmas, just so Kate doesn’t spend almost the entire holiday angry and upset. But then Susan couldn’t come and Clint likes seeing her at least once a year. They could, he supposes, cut out Kate’s dad entirely, but Susan’s place in New York is a shoebox and  there’s nowhere for her to sleep at Clint and Kate’s (there is absolutely no way Clint is letting her sleep on the couch), so it’s Papa Bishop’s dumb mansion until one or the other moves into a bigger place.

And even then Natasha probably wouldn’t come because she, like Em, actually gets on with her family and Christmas is about the only time they can actually meet up.

Maybe he’ll Skype Natasha after Jess. Actually, scratch that, he’s  _definitely_  Skyping Natasha after Jess. The time difference will be similar and he’ll want congratulating on being an adult, which is sad and pathetic but after putting up with Kate’s dad he definitely needs it. 

Kate’s dad is the worst.

“Hey Barton,” comes Jess’ voice, surprisingly clear through the massive fuck-off TV in Kate’s front room. (And isn’t that ridiculous? Kate has a front room and Susan has a front room, and Kate’s dad probably has a front room and  _the house_  has a front room and, really, what sort of house needs that many front rooms?)

“Hey Jess,” Clint replies, settling onto the couch. “Merry Almost-Christmas.”

Jess rolls her eyes, but she’s also smiling. “Merry Almost-Christmas to you too. Are you Skyping through a TV?”

“I’m in Des Moines,” Clint says, which explains everything really. Des Moines to him is either crushing poverty or ridiculous wealth, and being mostly miserable either way. The sooner he never has to come back, the better.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

Jess looks at him critically though the TV. It’s slightly disconcerting seeing as she’s using a laptop; her face is massive. It feels a little like a weird version of the Truman Show.

“So,” she says eventually. “Next summer.”

“Yeah,” Clint says again, sounding like a broken record.

“I’ve moved in with friends. If you stayed over, you’d be staying with my folks only.”

Clint frowns and sits up properly. “You sound way more amenable to the idea than Kate implied.”

Jess shifts a little, frowning and looking out of frame.

“I got on that Masters course I was telling you about.”

Clint rolls with the change of subject. “Biochem?”

“Yeah, at Imperial. I get student discount again. It’s – I’ve mentioned Fiaza to you right?”

Clint nods.

“Her flatmates bailed on her and she needed people to cover rent with. I had money and my friend Peggy wanted to move out of her shithole in Peckham, so we moved in with her.” She shrugs. “You have this way of making people want good things for you and… Well. I won’t be there a lot of the time. It’d be less weird.”

Well, at least Jess thinks it would be weird too. But – 

“I have what?” 

He wonders if this is going to be up there with Em’s ‘Clint Whisperer’ comment.

Jess waves her hand in a  _you know_  sort of way. “It’s the eyes,” she says. “You look all injured and I just want to give you a hug.”

Clint opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes to mind. 

“Right,” he says instead and then, “Does this… Is this an okay? I can stay?”

Jess looks at him for a long, silent moment. 

“We were great friends,” she says eventually, “and there’s shit here that you’d absolutely bloody love. My mum still wants to meet you and… I want to be friends, yeah? And I want to introduce you to my friends and take you clubbing and, I dunno. But it’d be fun, I think. So yeah. Yes. Come over.”

Clint’s face hurts, he’s grinning so hard.

“Get overworked in the NHS. Wow some kids with your wacky American accent. Get confused by the little windy roads.”

Jess is grinning too and Clint wishes he could reach through the TV and hug her.

“Oh my God Jess, thank you so fucking much.”

“You’re buying me cake,” she says warningly.

“Fuck no, I’ll get you something better than cake. How about Twizzlers?”

Joy is bouncing around his system so hard he thinks his chest is going to explode. He has a place to stay. He  _has a place to stay_.

“Hell no,” Jess exclaims, scrunching up her nose. “Those things are a sin against confectionery.”

Clint opens his mouth, but Jess cuts him off.

“And no Hershey’s either.  _That_  is a sin against chocolate. I am going to get you hooked on Cadbury’s and then you’ll understand.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Clint replies. “But let me know, yeah? Anything I can bring over. I owe you.”

“Damn right you do.”

 

From then on, Clint’s Christmas improves. He, Kate, and Susan go out for a meal, which is nice, if vaguely awkward in the way dinners with family members you don’t know very well are awkward (and here Clint realises that yeah, Susan is basically his sister. Susan and Kate. But hell no is Kate’s dad anything to him.) He Skypes Natasha and Em with Kate, Jess sends him emails about Oyster Cards and Boris Bikes and twelve million other things that don’t make sense to him, and he puts the finishing touches to an epic present for Kate.

See, one day Clint had been rooting around in the myriad of junk that inhabits the shelf above his bed when he’d found a bunch of old photos taken by Kate, during her photography phase when she was about seven, and, in among those photos, he found some of him and Kate and Kate’s mom. Those ones were probably taken by Susan, or on timer, or by some random person in whatever park they’d found themselves in, but there were ones of Clint and Kate’s mom, probably taken by Kate, and Kate and her mom, definitely taken by him.

He’d forgotten he had those photos.

So he’d kept a couple, copied a few more, and then gone out to buy a small photo album so he could, in the most artistic fashion he could manage – which isn’t very, but that’s not the point – create a little photo book, adding more photos from later that he’d got from Natasha and Em and anyone else he could find. He’s pretty proud of it, if he’s honest with himself. But he’s also gotten her some fancy Lord of the Rings art prints, just in case it turns out to be a horrible idea.

Clint, Kate, and Susan mostly spend Christmas Day eating too much and watching terrible Christmas movies as they open their presents _without_ Papa Bishop. (Kate thinks he has some new bright-eyed thing impressed with money to make him feel young, but she only voices the opinion once because half way through she _realises_ what she’s saying and the look of utter disgust that passes over her face would be funny if the entire situation wasn’t so patently depressing. Susan disagrees, but only because Susan thinks slightly higher of her father than Kate does). True to her word, Kate doesn’t give him money – but only technically. Instead she gives him hand-made IOUs valid for ‘one US passport’, ‘one night’s stay in DC’, and ‘one UK visa – no Clint don’t argue with us’ (the last one is signed by Natasha and Em too). They’re actually pretty impressive, considering Kate is about as artistic as he is.

Then she brings out a shoebox with a bunch of random stuff she’s collected throughout the year because Kate doesn’t do things by halves – and, Clint is convinced, because the only people who give him presents on Christmas Day are her and Susan and she wants to make up for that. It contains, among other things, a framed photo of him, Kate, Natasha, and Em from their summer BBQ, a Baymax keyring, and a mug that says THE COFFEE GOES IN HERE CLINT on it. 

Susan laughs at that one – like everyone else, she is very aware of Clint’s caffeine dependency – and then gives him the best smile when she unwraps the earrings he bought her, which she immediately puts on. Susan then chucks what turns out to be this year’s ‘non-practical’ gift – a leather cuff with an arrow embossed on it – at his head and laughs again when he utterly fails to catch it, before handing over a pile of things which Kate probably told her Clint needed.

See, Susan has, over the years, slowly but surely given him all those practical boring things you need to go to college, which Clint has completely failed to convince her to stop doing. This year it’s a replacement laptop cord, a new second gear for his bike and, for no reason he can fathom, a set of good pots and pans.

“Why the hell have you got me kitchen stuff?” Clint asks, more bemused than anything else.

“Because eventually you’ll move out of places that are owned by my dad.”

Clint squints at her suspiciously. “You better not be planning on furnishing my inevitably crap apartment,” he says, only half joking.

“Of course not,” Susan replies primly, the earrings Clint gave her swinging as she shakes her head. “But seeing as you’ll be cooking for me when I visit, I want to make sure everything meets my ridiculously high standards.”

Clint laughs at that. He can’t get as annoyed with Susan for this as he does at Kate and it’s mostly because of things like this. Susan dresses up her generosity with self-interest and, depressingly, that works better with Clint than Kate’s selflessness tends to do. It’s about the only thing Susan has managed to work out that Kate hasn’t and, while he’s fairly sure Kate will work it out eventually, it’s too late for Kate to change her approach now.

But the cuff Susan gave him is beautiful, if a little unexpected, and Clint decides that today is definitely the right day for getting all sappy, so he gives her a massive bear hug in thanks, tipping her backwards into an enormous pile of discarded wrapping paper and not letting go until she pokes him in the side hard enough to make him yelp and squirm away.

His gift for Kate in an unmitigated success; she almost fucking _cries_ , which he wasn’t expecting, and Susan looks a bit misty-eyed as well. And then it’s his turn to get tackle-hugged into the discarded wrapping paper pile. It’s kinda really awesome and makes for something nice to think back on during the painfully awkward Consistently Required Even Though No One Enjoys Themselves Bishop Christmas Dinner. Where, as usual, Papa Bishop gives his kids lavish but largely unwanted presents while Clint sits and watches.

At least the food is fucking stellar. And really, that’s all Clint cares about. It’s been a long time since Derek Bishop’s passive aggressive bullshit actually succeeded in making Clint feel shitty.

“I think,” Kate says, once they’ve dragged their too-full-of-food bodies up the required amount of stairs to flop onto the couches in Kate’s front room, “next year we just invite Natasha and Em. Make everything more bearable. And maybe dad might try and act like a person if they’re there. Hey, there anyone on the horizon for you, Suze? ‘Cause he should come too. Trial by fire.”

Clint’s almost sure he’s imagining the hesitation before Susan says, “No.”

“Eh, well. We should do that anyway. You’d like Natasha, Suze. She’s great.”

Clint smiles at that. Natasha _is_ great.

“Does dad even know you’re dating a girl?” Susan asks.

“Yup.” Kate pops the ‘p’. “I’m fairly sure he thinks it’s a phase.”

Clint snorts. “Please. You’re gonna fucking marry that girl. Phase my ass.”

Kate doesn’t say anything to that, but Clint can see the blush staining her cheeks and the pleased smile she’s trying to hide.

Susan catches his eye over Kate’s head and they grin at each other.

 

Clint and Kate continue the tradition of slobbing around when they arrive back in Willowdale, though Clint does remember to email Bruce to say that he’s definitely going to London and needs to know which hospitals he can apply to. And yeah, maybe three days after Christmas is not the right time, but he’ll forget otherwise. Bruce will understand.

Then Kate organises a New Year’s party for whoever’s still in Willowdale and their house is inundated by far more people than Clint expected – including Bucky who somehow manages to break one of their kitchen chairs, much to Kate’s amusement and Steve’s obvious chagrin.

Natasha isn’t there to kiss at midnight, but Clint has a feeling it’ll be a good year anyway.

 

Natasha comes back to Willowdale in early January, dumping her stuff at her place before coming over to Clint’s and doing some complicated eyebrow dance that has Kate and Em returning to Em’s in record time. She then produces a surprisingly not-dirty gift, considering she managed to throw Kate out of her own house.

It’s a quilt in purples and blues, concentric circles looking somewhere between bullseyes and ripples on a pond, with little bits picked out in white and grey thread. For a simple design it’s incredibly effective.

“I asked Vassa to make you one,” she says, looking surprisingly shy. “I know how much you like mine.”

Natasha's quilt is the most beautiful thing and Clint nabs it whenever he gets a chance. Yelena often tells him he looks like an old babushka, all wrapped up and watching TV, but Clint gives literally no fucks. It’s _so warm_. He didn’t realise that Natasha's aunt had _made it_ though.

“I – your… Vassa _made_ this?” he asks, suddenly almost afraid to touch it.

“She does quilting for fun and I wanted – ” Natasha cuts herself off, clearly unsure how to proceed. “I figured you’d like… something someone had made. For you. And.” She stops again, and Clint wants to hold her and never let go. “You’re… Maybe it’s a little _much_ , now. Or. I don’t know. But, I wanted you to have this.” She smiles crookedly. “Even if it’s not really anything I’ve made.”

“Oh my God,” he says, almost reflexively. “Tasha, this is amazing. You’re…” He doesn’t know what to say past that. What Natasha _is_ is nothing Clint can articulate. ‘Amazing’ seems inadequate.

Vassa must have spent _hours_ on this, just because Natasha asked.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he breathes out eventually, touching his fingertips to her cheek before reeling her in for the tightest hug. “Thank you _so much_.”

“You’re welcome, солнышко,” Natasha replies, hugging back just as fiercely, and they sit in silence, just holding on, for a good long while before Natasha pulls back and produces another gift with a magician’s flourish and an impish grin.

“And then there’s _this_.”

She brings out a small bag, pale pink with gold embossed writing on it. Clint reaches in and pulls out the most goddamn beautiful purple lace lingerie he has ever seen in his life.

“Holy fuck,” he breathes out. Even the  _idea_  of Natasha in these is making him light-headed, his blood rushing south and his jeans tightening uncomfortably. “Tash…”

“I’m indulging you,” she says, voice ridiculously husky as she pushes up back into his space, nose nudging his.

Clint groans and kisses her, pulling her into his lap. “And for a moment there,” he says breathlessly, “I thought you wanted me to wear them.”

Natasha gasps quietly and pulls back, her pupils huge and dark. “I wouldn’t say no,” she says, pushing her hands under his t-shirt. “It’d be hot as fuck.” She cups him though his jeans. “You in lace underwear. Fuck.”

Clint’s breath stutters, “Yeah?”

“You’d do that?” she asks between kisses.

“Oh my God.” She bites his lip, hard, and he arches into her. “You keep doing that and I’ll do whatever the fuck you want.”

Natasha groans, hands tightening in his hair before she pushes him away. “Go get naked,” she forces out, standing on unsteady legs and grabbing the little pink bag. “I’m going to get changed.”

It turns out that Natasha in purple lingerie is the kind of hot Clint’s brain has trouble comprehending. There’s miles of flawless skin and her hair seems to  _burn_  in the low light as she sways towards where he’s sat on his bed. She lets him explore her body like he’s never seen it before, caressing her sides, her thighs, the frankly magnificent swell of her breasts. Compared to her, he feels like nothing special, but she returns the favour nonetheless; running her hands up his back and through his hair, gasping into his mouth, grinding down on his cock until they’re panting and crying out, want crawling under their skin like fire ants.

It’s frantic and ridiculously hot, Natasha not moving from above him, opting rather to pull her underwear aside and ride him while he mouths at her breasts through the sheer lace of her bra, her hands vice-tight around his wrists.

Clint isn’t sure he’s ever had sex this good.  _Ever_. And she didn’t even get fully undressed.

“Holy crap,” he gasps into her shoulder as he fights to get his breathing under control. “ _Jesus_.”

“That good, eh?” she replies with a breathless laugh and Clint tightens his arms around her as much as his utterly boneless body will allow.

He can feel a pressure building inside his chest, realises what’s going to happen even as he tries to tamp it down, because this has never happened before and he’s not sure he’s equipped for the barrage of feeling. But, at the same time, it’s so fucking obvious.

He opens his mouth against her neck to speak, but nothing comes out and instead he takes a huge shuddering breath, pushing his nose right up behind her ear. Rallies, holds her tighter, takes a breath and smears, “I love you,” into her pulse point.

Natasha sucks in a huge stunned breath and  _fuses_  her mouth to his, as if she wants to swallow him whole. Clint’s not ready to go again by any measure, still strung out and boneless, but it doesn’t take long for him to get back in the game, with Natasha muttering in an incomprehensible mix of English and filthy sounding Russian while running her hands  _everywhere_.

“You’re going to kill me, солнышко,” she mutters, finally pulling off her new lingerie. “I swear to God.”

She presses another condom into his palm before pulling him over her and urging him between her legs with frantic hands. They’re both so sensitive it almost hurts and Clint has colours exploding behind his eyes as she tightens her legs around his waist, urging him  _faster_  and  _harder_  and  _right there, fuck_. 

When he comes this time, Clint yells loud enough to be really, really glad he has no neighbours.

 

It takes until the next morning for him to remember he never gave Natasha her present, so he hands her the parcels over breakfast. He’d struggled with them, unsure, caught between what he could afford and what he wanted to get her – which is everything and anything she wants, if he’s honest. But it was more than that too, because he didn’t want to mark her, to claim ownership of something that, realistically, he knows might not last, much as he wants it to. And it had tied him so tight in knots he’d actually sat down and explained it all to Kate just so she could roll her eyes at him and tell him he was being an idiot.

That helped, but the feeling of inadequacy still lingers, especially in light of the amazing presents Natasha got him.

Sometimes, Clint really fucking hates his brain.

Natasha laughs as he hands over the parcels. “You know, I hadn’t even noticed you hadn’t given me anything.”

“Oh well, in that case…” Clint makes as if to take the parcels back and Natasha laughs again as she snatches them away.

“Too late now,” she says, running her nail under the tape, and Natasha always unwraps gifts like this; trying not to rip the paper so she can use it again. It makes a marked contrast to him and Kate – and Em, actually. Em buys gift bags because, “What’s the point is spending money on something that’s gonna get ripped almost immediately?” And really, Clint can’t fault her logic.

“ _Stories of Your Life and Others_.” Natasha flips the book over to read the back.

“It’s – ” and Natasha's gaze flicks up to his as soon as he starts speaking. “There’s a story in there about language and… translation and communication and. Jane, she lent it to me, and it made me think of you and…” Clint shrugs, embarrassed. “I don’t actually know what you think about sci-fi.”

“But you know what I think about language,” she says, her entire face alight with a type of fondness Clint finds uncomfortable when directed at him. “And you like sci-fi.”

“That’s not – ” Clint starts, but Natasha gives him a look and he shuts up pretty quickly.

In the end he’d gone for fun things, scared he’d say too much with anything else. So there’s a t-shirt that says ‘The Comma Sutra; Making Grammar Sexy since 1875’, three DVDs Natasha had expressed interest in, and one of those picture frames that can hold seven or eight photos, filled with a set of selfies they’d taken in bed one day, the two of them pulling stupid faces at the camera and laughing into breathlessness.

Natasha outright laughs at that last one.

“I know it’s not much, not like – ” but that’s as far as Clint gets before Natasha places two fingers over his lips. She’s still smiling, but there’s something sad in her gaze and Clint’s heart sinks. He knew he’s fuck this up

“No. Just stop, Clint.”

She gives him a look, apparently until she’s sure that he’s not going to say anything more, before removing her hand.

“This is wonderful, Clint,” she says gently. “It is as wonderful as anything I could have given you.” And then Clint opens his mouth to refute that, she simply holds up one finger to stall him. “No, Clint. Listen to me.”

Natasha leans forward over the table, taking one of Clint’s hands into her own. “This – Christmas, gift giving, whatever – it’s not a competition. You shouldn’t tally it all up and measure yourself against what you think you find. I don’t give you things because I want you to give me something of comparable value – whatever you think comparable value means here, okay?”

“I know that,” Clint says, but his protestations sound weak, even to his own ears.

“No,” Natasha replies gently, “you don’t. But that’s okay; I’m here to remind you.”

She gives his hand a squeeze before letting go.

“And this?” she says, holding up the photo frame. “Is actually the best thing and I love it so much.” She grins down at it. “Look at your stupid face.”

She shoves it under his nose and points at the photo where, while Natasha looks radiantly happy, Clint looks somewhere between a dying whale and an overripe tomato, mouth open midway through a laugh. It’s a truly horrible picture of him, but photo itself is so wonderfully _happy_ he included it anyway.

“Shut up,” he mumbles, fighting not to smile.

“Oh god, and that one!”

She points at a photo where she looks like she’s trying not to cry into Clint’s shoulder. Clint actually looks decent in that one. “I look like I’m melting into you,” she says, sounding delighted at the very prospect.

Natasha grins down at the photos a moment longer before slapping Clint across the upper arm. “Now, c’mon. I’m going to put on this delightful new t-shirt and then we’re going to watch this.” She waves one of the DVDs in Clint’s face and then points with it towards the TV.

“Go set it up, boy,” she says in an imperious tone, a small grin on her face.

“Ma’am, yes ma’am,” Clint replies, throwing a sloppy salute in her direction while smiling and rolling his eyes.

It’s only when Natasha comes back from changing in his room that he realises that he accidentally bought the t-shirt a size too small. It totally wasn’t deliberate – not that Natasha believes him – but Clint has to admit, the overall result is pretty great anyway.

 

“Get in bitches! We’re going road tripping!”

Em swats at Kate, hard. “Shut up, it’s too early in the morning to be quoting Mean Girls.”

It’s around five in the morning and they’re all wrapped up in what feels like every item of clothing they own, piling into Kate’s car for the drive to Washington.

“It’s never too early to quote Mean Girls,” Kate says chirpily, and both Clint and Em glare at her. Kate isn’t a morning person unless being a morning person can be used to annoy. Then she is the most morning morning person known to man.

Em grumpily snags shotgun, so Clint and Natasha are left to pile into the back.

“You put the radio on, you die,” Clint warns. He’s only been allowed one coffee this morning, mostly because he had to share the pot with three others instead of just Kate, so he’s already starting the day more pissed off than usual. The fact that it’s five in the morning just makes it worse.

“Let me know if you want a break,” Natasha adds, moulding herself to his side and resting her head on his collarbone. It makes Clint warm and his lone coffee eventually loses out to sleep thanks to her quiet breath and the gentle motion of the car.

He wakes up to Em and Kate giggling and hushing each other.

“Mmrr…” Clint squints awake, fighting his way through coats and gloves and Hawkeye hats to find Kate and Em grinning back at him over the front seats. Kate has her phone out.

“You two are disgusting,” Em says. “Sickening, even.”

Somehow Clint and Natasha have managed to curl around each other on the back seat to become a pile of coats and car blankets. The seat belt is cutting into Clint’s neck and he suddenly realises that he hurts  _everywhere_.

“You did not take photos of us,” Clint says muzzily as Natasha grumbles awake against his neck.

Kate thrusts her phone into his face.

“You looked like cuddly Studio Ghibli monsters. Of course I took photos of you.”

They do kind of look like cuddly Studio Ghibli monsters. Natasha’s nose is all crunched up. She looks unbelievably cute.

“Am I driving now?” Natasha asks, squinting at Kate from her position across Clint.

“Pee break,” Kate says. “You can drive after. We’re near Harrisonburg. Wanna go to Shenandoah?”

“On the way back,” Natasha says, pulling herself upright. Clint’s temperature immediately drops and he moans pathetically, because  _coffee._  He needs coffee to deal with the cold and also with not cuddling Natasha any more. Urgh, mornings are the worst. 

“Anyway,” she adds reasonably, “it’s still dark.”

She gets out and stretches. “I’m going to pee. Clint and I get the front from now on. We should get into DC in under three hours. Appointment is at twelve and then I vote for doing something  _warm_.”

Clint’s not going to argue with that. It’s fucking  _freezing_. Stupid January.

 

The appointment takes fucking ages. Natasha and Em bugger off to send them Snapchats from whatever monument they happen to be standing in front of at the time. With  _coffee_. Mostly Clint’s jealous of the coffee; he’s not that fussed about seeing Honest Abe or the Washington Monument and at least the Passport Agency is  _warm_.

He has to produce about twelve million pieces of paper to prove he is who he says he is and it’s only after that he finds out that he can’t apply for his visa without proof of acceptance from the university he’s going to be studying with, which means  _another_  trip to DC sometime in the next couple of months, which is fucking annoying.

But at least he manages to elbow Kate out of the way and pay for his own passport. He’ll frame the IOU or something.

Clint fully intends to spend the rest of the day in coffee shops, hiding from the cold, and initially this plan works out. He and Kate find the nearest Starbucks to the Passport Agency and they both order the largest and strongest coffees they can get away with, while waiting for Natasha and Em to turn up from whichever famous landmark they’d ended up at. Eventually the other two arrive chatting in Spanish about… something and as soon as Natasha spots him she declares that they should all absolutely go to the Smithsonian, because, “We’re in Washington and the Smithsonian is a world class museum.”

Which Clint is super not into. Museums, in Clint’s experience, generally involve him trailing after Kate as she reads about ‘the representation of urban spaces as seen through the prism of postmodern discourse’ or whatever that last exhibition she took him to had been about. And yes, he knows not all museums are modern art museums (thank God), but still. There has to be something more interesting to do in the _capital of the United States of America_.

“Can’t we visit the White House or something instead?” Clint says.

“Museums _do not_ make you break out in hives, Clint,” Kate says, exasperated. “Honestly.”

“Plus I think you have to submit a request for a White House tour,” Natasha says. “Or ask for a tour from your Member of Congress. Or something. They don’t just let you _walk in_.”

She pulls out her phone, presumably to check.

“Who even _is_ our Member of Congress?” Clint asks.

“ _Also_ ,” Kate says, ignoring Clint completely and briefly distracting Natasha from her quest to find out just how to get a tour of the White House, “the Smithsonian is, like, an _institute_. It’s not one museum; it’s a bunch, including the National Museum of Natural History _and_ the National Air and Space Museum. _Which means_ ,” she continues over Clint’s attempt so say _so what_ , “We can either see dinosaurs or the USS _Enterprise_.”

Clint snaps his mouth shut. Holy crap. The USS _Enterprise_.

“Got your attention now, haven’t I?” she says with a smirk.

“We should do both,” Em says. Probably because she can tell he _really wants to see the Enterprise_ but she has about zero interest in _Star Trek_ – her one major failing.

“Both,” Clint says vaguely before he notices Kate’s growing smile.

“Both,” she says and _oh_ Clint knows where this is going.

“Both,” he repeats, nodding at her. Then, simultaneously, he and Kate turn to face Em and say, “Both is good.”

Em stares at them for a moment, her eyes flicking between the two. “I know you’re quoting something, but I don’t know what and I have I told you recently how creepy it is that you can do that?”

“Not recently, no,” Kate replies with a smile, leaning over to kiss Em on the cheek. “And remind me to show you _The Road to El Dorado_ when we get back home.”

A look of realisation crosses Em’s face, but before she can say anything Natasha suddenly says, “Twenty-one days in advance, minimum, and you have to request it through your Member of Congress.”

“What?”

“Getting on a tour of the White House.” She puts her phone back into her coat pocket and then frowns when she finds everyone staring at her in confusion. “What?”

“You missed everything we just decided, didn’t you?” Clint says fondly, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She’s much bulkier than usual; Clint’s not sure how many layers she’s wearing but it seems to be about seventeen more than anyone else. He’d questioned her about it actually. Something along the lines of, “But I thought you were Russian and therefore impervious to cold,” to which Natasha had replied, “Seventeen layers is _how_ I’m impervious to cold, солнышко.”

She probably has a point. She’s the only one absolutely not bothered by the current temperature. Clint’s contemplating zipping his coffee into his jacket for warmth as soon as they leave Starbucks.

“Maybe,” Natasha concedes after a moment. “What’s happening?”

“We’re going to see some dinosaurs and then a fake spaceship,” Em supplies succinctly.

“A _real_ fake spaceship,” Clint says, steering everyone out of the shop. Fuck, but it’s cold outside. “Which is where exactly?”

He has no idea where he is apart from ‘near the Passport Agency’. He’s not even that sure where they’re staying, other than ‘not near the Passport Agency, why are we walking in this weather, Jesus’. It’s not that he has a bad sense of direction; it’s more that Kate’s is better and he’s happy to defer to her. Plus, Natasha lived here for six weeks last year; she knows the place fairly well.

Turns out the museums they want to go to are all in the main park, where the Washington Monument and the White House and Capitol Hill and everything is, so Clint gets to see all the sights anyway. It’s kind of cool really, even if he feels a little like he’s trespassing. There’s something sort of… surreal about seeing them. He’s seen them on TV so many times that seeing them in real life is odd. Plus, seat of power and all that; part of him feels like the Secret Service is going to turn up at any moment and ask him to leave.

The museums themselves, it turns out, are _even cooler_. Clint’s forever going to blame Kate for never taking him to a museum like this before. Because Clint loves her, he really does, but going to museums with Kate is terrible because – well. Kate likes modern art. Clint’s fairly sure Kate only likes modern art because her mom liked modern art and it was a way to keep her mom’s spirit with her, or whatever. And he gets that, _he totally does_ , because he likes classic sci-fi for _exactly_ the same reason and after a while you grow to like it for its own sake so really Kate just likes modern art. But. But Clint really hates modern art. And he only _ever_ goes to museums with Kate so he’s only ever gone to modern art exhibitions and just… no. _The disjunctive perturbation of the figurative-narrative line-space matrix spatially undermines the distinctive formal juxtapositions_ or whateverthefuck. Nope. Nope nope nope. Piles of rubbish does not art make.

But this! Intellectually Clint had known that museums like this existed, he’d just never been. There are cases of the weirdest stuffed animals and models explaining things he’d never understood, like the San Andreas Fault and how hurricanes are formed. There’s an exhibition on all the birds of North America that have gone extinct and one on the National Parks Service. He feels like a kid in a candy store. He keeps rushing over to things and exclaiming really loudly over the weirdest shit – “Oh my God! It’s a fucking platypus! They’re so cute! Nat, I want one.” – and Natasha and Kate and Em just trail after him, laughing at his enthusiasm and loudly debating the merits of taking him to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, which no one knew was a thing. They only find out about it because Natasha is the kind of person who picks up all the free flyers available in the entranceway. It’s apparently just over the state border in Maryland and Clint _really_ wants to go, but he knows they don’t have time.

Turns out they don’t have time to go to the Air and Space Museum either. Clint would be sad, but today he saw a T Rex so he is fucking _golden_.

Plus, if they time everything properly, they can totally see the USS _Enterprise_ before leaving for Willowdale tomorrow.

 

They do end up seeing the USS _Enterprise_ the next morning, mostly because they unanimously agree that it is way too cold to stop off in Harrisonburg and walk in Shenandoah. In Clint’s opinion, it’s way too cold to even _get out if bed_. But then, when he has Natasha in his bed, he can always find plenty of very convincing arguments for him to stay there too.

They find a compromise though, when Em discovers there’s a scenic route home that doesn’t add too much time to their journey instead of taking Interstate 81 – well, it adds about two hours, but it’s totally worth it. Apparently it’s called the Skyline Drive and it’s so fucking cool they make Natasha stop about every half an hour to just so they can get out and stare at the views. Sure, there’s very little green on the trees, but it looks amazing nonetheless.

Kate even makes sure they have a picnic. It’s freezing, eating outside, but it’s so worth it. Kate takes about a million photos and Clint wraps himself around Natasha as they sit by the side of the road.

“We should come back in the summer,” Natasha murmurs.

Clint snorts. “I thought this whole trip was to make sure I can go to London in the summer?”

“Well, sometime when it’s all green.”

They stare at the rapidly setting sun a little longer.

“C’mon,” Natasha says, nudging him in the ribs. “Let’s get going. I have to be awake and alert for work tomorrow ‘cause I’m showing some new guy around and aren’t you starting your ER rotation soon?”

“Urgh,” Clint says, getting up off the cold ground. “Don’t remind me.”

“Kate!” Natasha calls. “America! C’mon, let’s go.”

They pack up their picnic and car blankets slowly, the cold making them slow and their fingers stiff.

“You’re driving now,” Natasha says, throwing Kate’s keys at her as she passes. “I want to cuddle and nap.”

Clint smiles at her. “I’m cool with this.”

They get home a little later than they planned, but both Em and Natasha have stuff at their place, so it doesn’t much matter. And hey, Clint now has a brand spanking new US passport (or will do, once it arrives in the post) and a plush platypus courtesy of Natasha. And on top of that, he saw a T Rex, the Washington Monument and the USS _Enterprise_. Everything’s good.

 

“Urgh,” groans Natasha, throwing herself down on Clint’s bed.

“Mmm?”

Clint hasn’t really woken up properly yet. ER rotations _are the worst_ and on top of that he’s got the fucking _night shift_ this week. You wouldn’t think a place like Willowdale would have a lively ER, but apparently it does.

“You know the new guy that started just after Christmas? The one who I did all the orientation for?”

“Mmm.”

“And who I said was a bit of a dick?”

“Mmm.”

“Scratch ‘a bit’. He’s a misogynistic douchecanoe.”

Clint wakes up a little more at that. “Douchecanoe?”

“Kate uses it a lot. I’m test driving it. I’m not sure it suits me.”

Clint shrugs against the pillow, shifting enough to actually look at where Natasha is splayed out on her back on top of his sheets. “Stick with the violent sounding Russian curses,” he advises. “They suit your general air of menace and badassery.”

“I have an air of menace and badassery?” Natasha asks, smiling over at him.

“When you’re angry? Hell yeah you do.”

Natasha rolls over to kiss him on the nose. “You’re my favourite.”

“Damn straight.”

Clint pulls his arm out from under his pillow to sling across Natasha’s back. It’s cold – because the weather is fucking ridiculous this February – but getting to hold Natasha is always worth it.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing  _specific_ ,” Natasha says, frustration evident in her tone. “He just... stands too close and calls me ‘Nat’ even though I’ve asked him not to. When he talks about Professor Berlinskaya I can’t tell if he’s being condescending or not, but I suspect he is, and he always has this patronising expression on his face when she talks, because she’s from Irkutsk and has a ‘hick accent’ by Russian standards.”

She makes a frustrated noise. “It’s nothing particularly  _bad_ , individually. Just all together it makes this awful slimeball of a human being who  _smarms_  and probably only doesn’t smack my ass because he’s read up on workplace sexual harassment and knows what he can and can’t get away with.”

Clint’s all the way awake now, frowning at her through bleary eyes. “Why don’t you say something?”

“Like what?” Natasha snaps. “‘Excuse me, I don’t want to work with this man because he calls me Nat even though almost everyone calls me Nat. He just says it in a way that makes my skin crawl’? What’s that going to do?”

Clint shrugs awkwardly. “I don’t… I don’t really know what to say.”

Natasha sighs. “I don’t need you to say anything, Clint.” 

She burrows into his side, probably trying to steal as much of his heat as possible. Clint whines unattractively when she presses her cold nose into his shoulder.

“I just want someone to rant at.”

“He really that bad?”

Natasha sighs. “You have no idea.”

 

That Wednesday Clint has a meeting with Bruce to finalise his placement in London. In addition to all the information Bruce had provided – detailing programmes with a variety of London hospitals Culver has ties to – he’d also gained some stuff through Jess and her father. In the end he’d opted for a small programme through King’s College to work at St Thomas’s Hospital on the Thames which has, according to Jess’ father, an outstanding children’s ward. So Bruce and Clint had wrangled it from the US side and Jess and her father had helped on the UK side and Clint’s about to officially enrol as a summer student of King’s College London.

If he’s honest, he’s kind of scared fucking shitless.

“Okay,” says Bruce, dumping the last sets of paperwork down in front of Clint. “These three have to be sent off to King’s in London; they’re insurance and finance related. These are the forms from Culver saying you have all the finance stuff – sign and date here and here.” Bruce points at the relevant pages. “One copy is for records and one gets sent to King’s.”

Clint’s pretty sure Bruce isn’t actually supposed to help him out as much as he has been doing, but Clint’s grateful all the same. Given his track record, he’d read something wrong and freak out and then someone else would have to pick up the pieces.

“This,” Bruce continues, giving him more paper, “is to confirm you have Right to Work in the UK. It goes to the UK Government. They’ll confirm it with King’s for you. This is your application to get a grant for your flights from the department – give the completed forms to Karen as soon as you can. And then, slightly unrelated but useful: Information about getting a student Oyster card – you can apply for one as soon as your student ID comes through.”

Clint stares at the piles of forms in front of him. Who’d’ve thought going for two months to study in the UK would involve so much paperwork? Actually, scratch that. He really shouldn’t be surprised after the rigmarole of applying for college here. In fact, the amount of paperwork is about the same. Which either means the UK has much less than normal or the US much more.

He decides to start off easy. “What’s an Oyster card?” He remembers Jess mentioning it as well, but that was at Christmas and he didn’t actually read the email properly.

“It gets you discounted travel around London. Even more discounted actually, considering this is the student one. But ask your friend to explain it to you before you fill it out. There’s a ‘zones’ thing there I won’t pretend to understand.” 

Clint starts at the papers a little longer, while Bruce sits back down and starts tapping away on his laptop.

“They don’t need to be sent off  _now_ ,” Bruce says with a teasing smile. “You can go home. I’m not going to make you sit here until they’re done. This isn’t high school.”

Clint nods and starts packing everything away into his messenger bag. He woke up early for this meeting – and by early he means four in the afternoon, ER rotation is the worst – and is still a little disorientated, which is probably why he ends up asking Bruce, “Why did you do all this?”

“What?” Bruce looks up at him over the rim of his glasses.

Clint waves his hand to encompass the papers that no longer litter the table. “Why did you do it?”

“The forms?”

“Yeah.”

Bruce gives him a funny look. “You’re my student.”

“Yeah, but – ”

“You’ve paid thousands of dollars to get in here, Clint. I’m making sure you get your money’s worth.”

Clint briefly considers trying to argue more, but instead just nods and leaves. He has a feeling that Bruce can be obstinate when he wants to be. He’s likely never to give an answer Clint will accept.

He shrugs away the uncomfortable feeling that Bruce probably understands him better than he would like.

Clint has about an hour before he has to be back at ER, so he decides to head home and fill out as many forms as he can in the intervening time. Thankfully his passport turned up a week ago, so he has a lot of that information now. Though it also means that he and Kate will be going back to DC for his visa shit in a couple of days, but he’s trying not to think about that too much. He’s going to be fucking _exhausted_ and his ER rotation doesn’t finish for another two weeks. God, he never wants to work ER ever again. The shit people get up to.

He’s halfway through an insurance form when Kate bursts through the door.

“Oh my God,” she says, breathlessly excited. “Oh my God, look at this.”

A sheaf of papers is unceremoniously shoved within an inch of Clint’s face.

“Christ Bishop,” Clint says, jerking away from the sudden movement. “What the hell?”

Kate huffs and brandishes the papers. “ _Look_ ,” she says forcefully.

Kate’s waving the papers now, so all he can make out for certain is a blue logo in the top right corner. 

“I can’t see anything with you waving them in my face,” Clint says, slightly annoyed. “Give ‘em here.”

Kate rolls her eyes and thrusts the papers into his hands. “It’s an internship,” she says and Clint can see the logo now; light blue, the world framed by laurel leaves. “For the UNDP in New York. It’s a general management and leadership internship within the development program, but _dude_ , I could end up working for UN Women if I’m good enough!”

Clint absolutely knows that Kate is good enough.

“And you’ve applied?” he asks, handing the papers back. And then, as the thought strikes, “Wait, you’d move to New York?”

Kate rolls her eyes. “Of course I’d move to New York. One: _New York,_ and two: _the UN_. I am too awesome to spend my life in Willowdale. And definitely too awesome for Iowa. And no, not yet. But I’m gonna.”

Clint stares at her dumbly for a moment. Of course he knows Kate wouldn’t stay in Willowdale forever, but he always forgets that his is the only degree that takes this long; Kate graduated last year. This is her masters she’s doing now and of course she has to think about the future. It’s just... if she moves to New York, what does he do? Can he stay here in this house without her? It’s her dad’s house, _she’s_ the link. If she goes, will it get sold? Rented out? He can’t pay his share now; there’s no hope in hell he could pay for the entire place on his own.

“What’s wrong?”

Kate’s voice jerks him out of his increasingly panicked train of thought.

“Nothing,” he says quickly. Probably too quickly though, because Kate frowns.

“I don’t even know if I’ll get it yet,” she says. “I haven’t even _applied_ , or talked to Em or Susan about it. But it’s a great opportunity.”

“Yeah, I know,” Clint says quickly. “It’s amazing, you should totally go for it. They’d be dumb not to hire you.”

“But…?” Kate asks leadingly.

“Nothing,” Clint says again. “I – Nothing.”

“You know you’ll still have this place until you become a fully qualified doctor, right?” Kate says, once again displaying her uncanny ability to understand what’s bugging Clint even before he’s willing to admit it. “Up to the end of Foundation Two, this place is yours.”

“You can’t – ”

“I can and I will.”

“But your dad – ”

“Is a fuckwit,” Kate says firmly. “I don’t care. Em can move in here if he needs rent so bad. Or Natasha or… I dunno, someone else you don’t hate. But he doesn’t need the money and I refuse to let him be that petty.”

He doesn’t need to say it – has never needed to say it – but Kate’s dad thinks Clint is trailer trash and resents almost every minute of their friendship. The fact that Clint had managed to live with the Bishops for a year was a minor miracle only really achieved through Kate’s yelling matches and the fact that both Clint and Kate’s dad are workaholics, so their interactions were kept to the absolute minimum. Christmas visits are achieved by largely the same methods.

Clint sighs heavily and lets the conversation drop. He can’t imagine he’ll be able to convince Kate otherwise and he wouldn’t know what to do if she did suddenly change her mind. He’d have nowhere to go. If he’s honest, he’s not sure what he’ll do when he graduates; if he’ll have enough savings to last him into the beginning of his foundation year. Thank Christ he’ll start getting paid for Foundation.

“Okay,” he says instead. “Okay. So, do you get to go anywhere? Help out places? Or is it all just based in New York?”

And, as he watches Kate’s expression morph back into excitement, he wonders how much of Kate’s time is spent worrying about him and his issues. It must be exhausting having him as a friend; having to deal with his neurosis and freak outs and constant self-doubt. The fact that she willingly puts up with him makes her about the most amazing person he knows.

He really, really, _really_ hopes she gets this internship.

 

The last two weeks of his ER rotation pass in a haze of exhaustion, long night shifts coupled with a weekend trip to DC for his visa meaning his sleeping pattern gets screwed up to a ridiculous degree. He hardly sees anyone who isn’t working the same shift as him and he only manages brief breakfast meet-ups with Natasha about twice, which sucks. But they’d decided a week into February that staying over at each other’s places was pointless when they’d mostly be half asleep the times they could actually see each other. At least with breakfast meet-ups Clint only has to hold out an hour after his shift ends and he doesn’t mess up her day.

But _now_ his ER rotation has ended and he has a whole weekend to sleep-slash-get-his-body-clock-back-to-normal before working Spring Break at Logan’s while Kate and Em live it up in the Dominican Republic, because Em’s gym is ridiculously chill about time off and Kate wouldn’t take no for an answer. Kate had – as usual – asked of Clint wanted to come (on Papa Bishop’s dollar, of course) but Clint had – as usual – turned her down. She must have predicted it this time too, as this was the first time she’d elected to go abroad for Spring Break and, at the time of it being organised, the idea of Clint getting a passport hadn’t even been dreamed up.

Natasha, of course, has a real person job, so Natasha will probably stay with him, where they can, if they want, have loud sex in inappropriate places with no one to complain.

 

“Oh hey,” Clint says, looking up as a blast of frigid air swirls through Logan’s as Bucky enters. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Serves you right for deciding to be a _doctor_ ,” Bucky says jokingly as he drags a stool out from behind the counter.

“What does?”

“Being bereft of my awesome presence,” Bucky replies with a smirk as he settles down in amongst various bike parts. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Clint echoes, rolling his eyes. Bucky had made a habit ages ago of coming in and working in the bike shop rather than a café when Clint had shifts. He’d said it was because this way he gets to sit somewhere warm without having to pay for anything, but Clint thinks it’s because there’s something Bucky finds inspirational about the smell of oil and metal, which is super fucking weird if you ask Clint, but Bucky’s good company so he doesn’t complain.

And if he’s honest, he’s missed this. Clint’s friendship group is comprised overwhelmingly of women, which he is obviously totally cool with, but sometimes he likes just chatting shit with guys. And the ER rotation means he’s not seen Bucky since New Year. Steve he at least sees occasionally when he goes to get coffee from The Bean Tree.

Logan comes into the shop from the garage, narrows his eyes at Bucky, grunts, grabs some things, and returns to the garage.

“He should be a comics’ character,” Bucky says eventually, breaking the silence of Logan’s passing. “Like, some surly bastard who hates everyone and guts people with knives.”

“You can add him into yours,” Clint says vaguely, only half paying attention. That Peter kid’s been in again. He’d broken all the tines on his front wheel from taking an icy corner too fast and hitting a fire hydrant. He’d given Clint the most epic puppy eyes to fix it on the cheap and Clint had eventually caved; the kid’s half the reason Clint still has a job to be honest. He can do him a favour every now and again.

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, because your boss would fit into post-Fall East Africa so well.”

Clint will forever be confused as to why Steve and Bucky decided that their comic should be based in East Africa despite the fact that neither of them have ever been there. But when he’s asked, all Steve talks about is drawing challenges and diversity in comics, and Bucky just gets really excited by research and ‘doing something no one has ever done before.’ Whatever floats your boat, Clint guesses.

“Anyway,” Bucky asks. “You do anything interesting recently?”

So Clint tells him about his various trips to DC, his ER rotation, Kate currently being in the Dominican Republic, Natasha’s awful co-workers. He strings it out for as long as he can – moving his tools into the main shop so he can fix Peter’s bike at the counter as he talks – because he can see that Bucky is absolutely _bursting_ to tell him something and Clint enjoys watching him suffer.

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” Bucky says sharply, interrupting Clint’s rehash of an ER story he told probably only half an hour before.

“Now what gives you that impression?” Clint says with a smirk, checking the pressure of the tire in his hands before mentally pronouncing himself done.

“You’re a dick.” Bucky rolls his eyes but utterly fails to hide his excitement. “I have the most fucking epic news and you’re being a jerk to me.”

Clint dismisses his words with a wave of his hand. “You love me really.”

He sweeps all his tools into a pile and places the fixed tire just inside the door to the garage, before sitting down behind the counter with an overly exaggerated look of rapt attention. “Hit me.” 

“ _Dick_ ,” Bucky says as he takes off his leather jacket and rolls up his Henley sleeve, revealing what looks like an almost-finished Oh-my-God-hide-the-Patrick-with-a-bionic-arm tattoo. 

“Okay, first – isn’t this the shit!?” he exclaims, shoving his forearm within an inch of Clint’s nose. “Isn’t it the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“ _This_ is what you were so excited about?” Clint says incredulously, pulling back until he’s not actively inhaling Bucky’s arm hair. Bucky’s sent him frequent Snapchats of his tattoo progression since Christmas. It’s cool, but it’s not _news_.

“Of course fucking not.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “You just haven’t seen it properly yet. It’s not done, there’s the shoulder bit and the hand bit that need finishing, but it’s pretty sweet right?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer, instead digging out a bunch of papers from his bag and pushes them towards Clint.

“ _This_ is what’s fucking epic though.”

They’re official looking, if now a little tatty, with a letter calling Bucky ‘Mr Barnes’ and Steve ‘Mr Rogers’. There’s a little logo in the corner; a lowercase ‘i’ that Clint can’t help but think looks a little like a dick. It all seems to have something to do with comics, but he can’t work out what.

“What is it?” Clint asks

“This,” Bucky says dramatically, “is a letter of acceptance for mine and Steve’s comic proposal from Image Comics.”

“Good?” Clint says tentatively. He has no idea about these kinds of things.

Bucky visibly deflates. “Oh you’re the worst. _Yes,_ good! They’re the third biggest comics publisher in the US and _definitely_ the one doing the most interesting stuff. This is epic!”

Clint smiles. “Well congratulations then,” he says, handing the papers back to Bucky. “I hope you broke the news to someone who knew how epic this was before me.”

“Well, duh. Steve, obviously,” he says, ticking them off on his fingers, “Gran, my folks, the guys at the shop, Kamala, the guys on the website – you know, a bunch of people.”

“I’m pretty far down the list then?” Clint says with a smile. Clearly constant retelling hasn’t dampened Bucky’s excitement one bit, though. He’s probably just as excited now as he was when the papers arrived at his and Steve’s place.

“Dude,” Bucky says, smiling as he pulls out his notepads from his bag. “You’re awesome but you’re shit for comics.”

“Break my heart why don’t you.” Clint rifles through a pile of paperwork that needs filling out, because Logan is the worst at paperwork. “So what are you scribbling now?”

“Issue fifteen script,” he says, pointing at one notebook, “and general story arc notes slash research.” The second notebooks is massive and, in Clint’s opinion, disturbingly well organised. “Steve’s finishing the last few pages of the latest chapter of the web comic and then we’re going to put it on hiatus while we sort this stuff for Image. It’s going to be _awesome_.”

The bell on the door tinkles as it opens and lets in a blast of cold air, which clearly reminds Bucky that he hasn’t yet put his leather jacket back on and is still gesticulating with his Henley sleeve bunched up around his shoulder like a fucking idiot.

“Well good luck,” Clint says, as Bucky redresses. “I’ll definitely buy a copy.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Bucky says grinning as the customer approaches the counter, “I’ll get Steve to draw you in.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a trip to the beach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RL intrusions are continuing. I'm applying for a masters at the moment so it's likely all my fic writing is going to become more sporadic. But still! I love these guys. I'm not giving up on them.

Clint finishes work earlier than Natasha – mostly because Natasha’s job has fixed hours while Logan just tells him to fuck off when he’s sick of Clint being in the garage. Which usually happens around five, but Clint has left work at half two before. He’d complain about loss of earnings, but Logan pays him a flat rate for eight hours a day. It means no overtime, but it also means he gets paid even if he’s sent home at midday. It’s not the soundest business plan Clint has ever come across, but then again he doesn’t even try to pretend he understands Logan.

Today he’s home by half five, so he decides making curry or something else vaguely impressive is totally the way to go. It’ll make up for the two months when he was a zombie. He squints into the fridge, mentally goes through all the ingredients needed for curry, dismisses it as an option, and is halfway through making fajitas with homemade guacamole when Natasha comes through the door.

“I apologise in advance,” she says, a controlled quality to her voice that immediately sets Clint on edge, “for the rest of the evening.”

“Why?” Clint says warily.

“That _fucking_ guy!” Natasha exclaims with uncharacteristic venom, slamming her bag onto the kitchen table. “That fucking – ” and here Natasha descends into some very nasty sounding Russian profanities, stripping off her scarf and jacket and blazer before apparently realising she’s undressing in the kitchen and giving a strangled yell of frustration, grabbing her stuff and stomping off into Clint’s room.

Silently, Clint rummages through Kate’s designated ‘alcohol cupboard’, mostly full of leftovers from house parties, for a decent looking bottle of white wine. Yeah, so fajitas and wine might not be a natural pairing but fuck it; Natasha sounds like she needs it.

He has a glass ready for her as soon as she comes back, dressed in a pair of his sweatpants and a t-shirt that he thinks might have been Kate’s before it was his and now clearly belongs to Natasha.

“Thank you,” she says tersely, taking a large gulp and collapsing into a seat at the table.

“Don’t break the glass,” is all he says in return. Clint’s learnt that Natasha sometimes needs a moment to herself to calm down before he can do anything like kiss her hello or give her a hug. He’d call it weird, but he has a hundred and one strange habits and coping mechanisms of his own, so he’s in no position to judge.

“I’m not going to break the glass,” Natasha all but snaps.

“Your knuckles are white,” Clint points out.

Natasha sighs and puts the glass down, dropping her head so her forehead meets the table top.

There’s a minute or so of silence, punctuated only by the clangs of Clint moving pans and plates around, before Natasha lets out another sigh, and Clint knows he can approach.

“Hi,” he says quietly, squatting down next to her chair and smoothing errant strands of hair out of her face.

“Hi,” she replies, giving him a tired smile before kissing him gently on the cheek so he doesn’t have to tastes the wine on her breath. He sort of adores her for that.

“Not a great day then?”

Natasha snorts, smile dropping from her face again, and drinks some more wine.

“Looking up now, though,” she says, leaning into his side and tucking her head into the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. He’s not super comfortable, crouched down by her chair, but she’s warm and smells of mint and deodorant and _Natasha_ and he doesn’t really want to move.

“What happened?”

“You happened.”

Clint rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. “I mean today, at work.”

Natasha gives him an unamused look. “I know what you meant.”

She gives him another kiss on the cheek before sighing again.

“He’s just…” Natasha starts before trailing off.

‘He’ in this case is Ivan Petrovich – who, in Clint’s head, is either Ivan Fucking Petrovich or Ivan the Terrible – some douchebag Natasha works with and the current bane of her existence. Clint hates the guy on principle for how he treats Natasha and he’s never even met him.

“It’s just all these little things,” Natasha continues after a moment, like it took a little while to order her thoughts into something that makes sense. “He assumes I’ll be typing up the research notes, because  _women are always the secretaries_ , right? He doesn’t help, or offer to help, when I have to get things from high shelves or things like that – ”

Clint smiles at that, but immediately loses the smile as Natasha turns her annoyed gaze on him.

“And you think that’s funny, or… Or  _understandable,_ because you’re dating me. Or, I don’t know,  _why should I need help_ , which is great and all but not the point. He’s always there, he  _watches_. I’m not – in his head I’m a pretty picture. My opinion on it doesn’t matter.”

She takes another large swig of wine. “Like him calling me Nat,” she continues, the anger in her voice increasing. “You call me Nat, Kate and Em call me Nat, almost all of my friends bar Yelena call me Nat. But I’m okay with that, I _let_ you.  _He_ calls me Nat even when I’ve asked him not to. My opinion, my wishes,  _don’t matter to him_.”

Clint opens his mouth to say something – though he doesn’t know what – but Natasha just barrels over him. Venting, like now she’s started, she just can’t stop.

“Ideas I’ve voiced and he’s dismissed, he then rephrases and presents as his own. He contradicts me on points that don’t matter and snorts and rolls his eyes when I express things that do. He tries to explain my job to me, despite the fact that I’ve been doing it for longer than he has. He makes passing comments on my appearance like I should be grateful of the attention.”

Natasha’s voice is rising now and Clint has never seen this level of anger from her before. She’s usually so calm and collected; unflappable.

“He implies that he’s smarter than me, that his ideas have more weight, that he should be given more attention and better opportunities. That Tania – Professor Berlinskaya – should  _rely_  on him, should value his opinion more, should  _clearly_  see him for the genius he is and not an upstart little shit with 3.1 GPA and an ego the size of a small planet.”

Natasha all but slams her wineglass onto the table top.

“And, on top of that, he’s a  _skeeze!_  I feel like I need a shower every time I come within touching distance of him.”

She makes an inarticulate noise of rage and drops her head onto her outstretched arms. “I want,” she says, voice muffled by her hoodie, “to punch him in the face.”

“I think I would support that,” Clint says carefully. His legs are going dead, but he doesn’t have any intention of moving yet.

“You think,” Natasha says.

“I don’t – ” Clint starts, cutting himself off before he says something dumb and beginning again. 

“Kate talks about this sort of thing a lot,” he says instead. “And I get it but – I also don’t?”

He shifts slightly, before thinking _fuck it_ and sinking down to sit cross-legged beside Natasha’s chair. His head is about level with her thigh. It makes him feel a bit like a child.

“Like, I  _understand_ but I don’t get it. That make sense?”

He leans his head against her thigh. “And I don’t know what to do to help.”

Natasha sighs again. “I guess that does make sense. And I’m not really asking you to help, just… be here.” She lifts her head from her arms and smiles when she sees him practically sat at her feet. “And continue to not be a douchebag. That would be great.”

“And in that vein,” he says, smiling, “fajitas? They probably need a little reheating but they should be good.”

“Fajitas would also be great,” she says smiling. “And _Cool Runnings_. I really fancy watching _Cool Runnings_.”

They eat reheated fajitas and watch _Cool Runnings_ and almost become one with the couch, slouching down so far that Clint’s fairly sure he’s doing permanent damage to his spine or his neck or _somewhere,_ because Jesus does he hurt. But Natasha has forgotten, at least for a while, her douchebag co-worker and _Cool Runnings_ makes everything better, so they run straight into watching _Labyrinth_ and then _Die Hard_. He’s fairly sure he falls asleep at some point, but he wakes up some time around two in the morning to see John McClane reunited with his family and Natasha almost swallowed by the couch cushions, squashed down against his side and puffing warm gusts of air straight through the material of his sweater, her hoodie rucked up around her waist.

He contemplates waking her up, but then decides that all that archery muscle has to be worth something and instead carries her into his room, gently undressing her before stripping down to his boxers and crawling under the covers himself. He dreams of David Bowie having a snowball fight with the Jamaican bobsled team and a load of puppets before German terrorists start shooting up the office they’re in, and wakes up again much later than intended to Natasha staring at him from two inches away.

“Hey,” she says softly. “Sorry about last night.”

“Mmm. Why?”

Natasha smiles slightly. “I had grand plans to sex you up, but… y’know.”

Clint squints at her from where his face is smushed into his pillow. “Well, that’s a shame,” he says. “I’m always amenable to being sexed up.”

Natasha’s smile gets bigger. “I know.  I enjoy sexing you up.” She sneaks a hand up under his t-shirt and snuggles closer. “Blonds blush so prettily.”

“Shut up.”

“Nope, not gonna,” she says into his neck, but she doesn’t say anything more and Clint’s just falling back asleep when she groans and stretches, pulling the covers right off him.

“ _Бля_ , I hurt fucking _everywhere_. Why did we think falling asleep on the couch was a good idea?”

“Urgh,” Clint says instead of replying, scrabbling around until he can grab a handful of the covers and drag them back over himself. “Jesus.”

But now she mentions it, Clint can feel the tightness in his shoulders and all down his back. It feels like someone stuck a winch between his shoulder blades and wound it up until it couldn’t go any further. Archery tomorrow is going to be murder.

“I should go swimming,” she says, mostly to herself. She sighs. “You want to come swimming with me?”

“Can’t really swim,” Clint says into her hair. Not much call for swimming in Iowa.

“What?” Natasha looks sort of shocked and Clint shrugs.

“What? I’m from Iowa. Kate’s place has a pool, so I can, like, _not drown_ , but I can’t really swim.”

“Didn’t they teach you at school?” she asks, but before he can answer – with a snort because seriously? – she pulls back completely and frowns at him. “Wait. Wait, wait. You’re from Iowa. Have you ever seen the ocean?”

“No?”

Natasha stares at him. “Never?”

“I’ve seen the Great Lakes?” Although he hasn’t, not really. Only from Detroit and it’s not like he was paying much attention when he was there. “Anyway, what does it matter? It’s just a lot of water.”

Natasha stares at him a bit more before rolling out of bed and starting to pull on jeans.

“Get up.”

“Huh?”

“Get up. Grab a coat and some decent shoes. C’mon.”

She puts on her bra and grabs a top.

“ _C’mon_ ,” she says again, more insistent.

“Why?” he asks, as he pulls on his jeans and rummages around on the floor for a t-shirt.

“We’re going to the seaside.”

Clint stops what he’s doing to stare at her. “What?”

He’s mostly dressed but he’s clearly not moving fast enough for Natasha who picks up a pair of his boots before grabbing him and dragging him out of the room. He only just has the presence of mind to grab his wallet, phone, and keys in time.

“We’re going to the beach. I can’t believe you’ve never seen the ocean.”

“It’s March,” he points out. “And we must be hours from the nearest beach. And driving isn’t going to make your back feel any better. And,” as an afterthought, “I need coffee.”

“We can get coffee on the way.”

“I need to study.”

“You’re always studying. And it’s _Spring Break_. Live a little.”

He’s tripping along in her wake as she grabs coats and scarves and pushes him towards his bike.

“I’m not cycling to the beach, Tash.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “No,” she says patiently. “You’re cycling to mine. I’m driving us. C’mon.” When he just stares at her some more, she pushes him again. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“I’ve seen it on TV. It’s not that impressive.”

“You only say that because you’ve not actually seen it. C’mon, there are two more days of Spring Break. All you’ve done is work at Logan’s, study and watch TV. We need to do _something_.”

Clint opens his mouth to protest some more, but can’t really think of anything that Natasha would actually take as a serious complaint. Plus, she can be kind of stubborn. If he doesn’t cycle over to hers she’ll probably walk there and then drive back to park outside his place, leaning on the horn until he comes out to prevent Night Nurse Aimee from gutting him for waking her up – and now that he’s done nights in the ER, he finally _understands_ that impulse.

“I do archery too,” he says instead and when Natasha just raises an eyebrow in return he throws up his hands. “Fine, fine. Get on.”

Natasha perches precariously on the seat while he pedals, a bunch of hastily grabbed stuff in a canvas bag hanging from her arm. He can’t see what she’s doing, but she’s muttering to herself about drive times and open interstates so he guesses she’s planning the route on her phone.

When they arrive at her place, she refuses to let him tie his bike up outside like usual and instead scares the crap out of Yelena by helping him carry it into her room, where she tears around in a whirlwind, shoving clothes and toiletries in a backpack before grabbing Clint by the arm again and dragging him back out to the car.

“What the fuck?” Yelena asks as he’s pulled past her again in the other direction.

“Apparently we’re going to the beach,” he says rather helplessly.

“Right,” comes her rather flat reply, just before Natasha shoves the front door closed and pushes Clint into the passenger seat of her car.

“We’re going to Wilmington,” she says once they’re on the main road out of town. “It’s about a five hour drive. I grabbed your clinic work. It’s in the tote.”

Clint rummages around in the tote bag for his work, though the urge to study is waning dramatically the further from Willowdale they get. But what he actually finds is not his clinic work.

“These are condoms,” he says, pulling out a strip.

“Oh,” she says, smirking while taking a left turn a shade too fast. “My mistake.”

She grins at his narrowed eyes. “Coffee?”

 

Turns out Clint really can’t study in a car – though Natasha did, in fact, grab some of his clinic work – so they end up alternating between talking about Natasha’s years living in Paris as a teenager and singing along to cheesy nineties songs on the radio. Clint sends Kate a bunch of Snapchats to the tune of _Natasha kidnapped me to take me to the beach_ , to which Kate responds with videos of the beach outside her and Em’s rented apartment in the Dominican with the Hallelujah Chorus playing in the background. Because Kate is _subtle_. But then they accidentally hit on a radio station that plays _actual_ classics and Natasha sort of blows his mind singing along to some song he’s never even fucking heard of in an insanely fucking sultry voice, so they have to pull over outside Mt Airy to put the condoms to good use.

Clint doesn’t want to admit that he hears the Hallelujah Chorus as Natasha sucks bruises on his neck in the back seat of her car, parked as far as they can from the random roadside diner she picked, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. Fucking Kate.

They arrive at Wilmington around three in the afternoon and, as Natasha refused to stop after Mt Airy and Clint never got breakfast or lunch or  _anything_ substantial in the food department, he’s kinda pissed that she drives straight through town. He doesn’t understand how Natasha can power through without food. Sure, he got coffee and power bars in Mt Airy and they had a hell of a lot of popcorn after the fajitas last night, but power bars aren’t real food, popcorn is mostly air, and Clint is  _hungry._

“There’ll be places to eat there, Clint. Don’t be a child.”

Natasha looks giddy, smile stretching wide over her face. Sometimes Clint wonders if Willowdale is just too small for her. She’s lived in Paris, visited London and New York and Moscow and a host of other big cities; Willowdale must be so small to her, with everything interesting so far away.

“I grew up in Split,” Natasha reminds him. “Post-war construction. Russians were very good at that, outside of their own borders at least. Point is, I grew up by the sea. You  _miss it_.”

“It’s just water.”

“Do you miss the stars?” she asks. “Iowa’s open prairie skies? I’ve talked to Kate and she sure does. There’s nothing  _just_.”

It’s a grey kind of day; grey skies and grey tarmac and a strong, salt-smelling wind. Natasha parks in a half-empty lot behind some rather impressive, grass-topped sand dunes and gives him a quick kiss before getting out of the car.

“This was such a good idea,” she says, breathing deep while winding her scarf around her neck. It’s not cold per se, but it’s windy – the kind that _whips_. Natasha is currently disappearing in and out of a cloud of red hair.

“You’ve been driving for almost five hours,” Clint points out. His legs are cramping like mad. They made good time, but surely the ocean isn’t worth that long in a car.

“And now we’re going to walk along the beach. A  _beach_ , Clint. It’ll be worth it, you’ll see.”

Or apparently it will be.

Being shit poor has two effects on wanderlust: either you get the fuck out as soon as you can afford, travelling like some hippie rolling stone and going to all the places you only ever saw in books or on TV during your childhood, or it means that your interest in the world at large is tempered rather dramatically by the worry that if you do too much at once you’ll run out of money and end up worse off than you ever were as a kid. To the surprise of no-one at all, Clint falls into the latter group. Both through natural neurosis and through well-honed feelings of self-preservation; you can’t be disappointed by not getting things you’ve never wanted.

Mostly Clint learnt not to want and any dreams he’d had as a kid revolved around not getting hit, so in that respect he’s definitely fucking living the dream.

Natasha locks the car, grabbing him by the hand and pulling him up and over the nearest dune. The footing is unsteady and the wind whacks him in the face as they crest the rise, but she doesn’t let him find his balance before she’s dragging him down, down, down into salty air.

Seeing the sea is kind of weird. He’s seen it on TV of course, and in the theatre but that’s like saying you’ve experienced summer through a window.

It’s so much  _bigger_.

Natasha drags him to the water’s edge, only dropping his hand to pull off her shoes and socks and to bat at his ankles until he does the same. The sand is cold in a way the sandbanks of the creeks back in Iowa never were and the sea and sky are like grey slate, calm and vast and endless.

“C’mon,” Natasha says, shoving their shoes into plastic grocery bags she produces from somewhere before throwing them into yet another tote and slinging it over her shoulder.

Clint gives her a look.

“Doesn’t matter what time of year it is when you come, you always have to go in. It’s a rule.”

And she grabs his hand and leads him into the surf.

The water is, unsurprisingly, freezing around his ankles and he can feel the water leech away sand from beneath his feet, but Natasha tucks her arm into the crook of his elbow and presses herself all up his side and whispers, “Look.”

Clint looks.

He can see a ship on the horizon and birds skirting the swell. He can see the white foam of breaking waves and he can see water; endless and grey. It’s like the wheat fields he drove through as a kid in Iowa, apart from more distant somehow, because he could walk into those wheat fields, but he can’t walk into this; miles and miles of unattainable viewpoints, restless and ever-changing.

He stares so long he almost gets vertigo, stares so long the sea and the sky become the same shade of blue-grey, until he feels like if he were to fall he’d fall _upwards_.

It feels like the sky above the creek in Iowa; the one he’d go to when being home hurt too much. Huge and unreachable and _safe_ ; big and small at the same time.

Clint’s not sure how long they stand in the surf, watching the horizon. He doesn’t notice the time passing or the tide getting higher. He doesn’t know what he thinks or _if_ he thinks or if he just checks out; the soft rushing sound of the ocean like white noise, quieting his mind. He doesn’t even notice that Natasha’s hands have crept inside his coat and that she’s curled around him in a shitty parody of a rom-com poster until she gently presses a kiss to his collar bone and says, “I can’t feel my feet.”

Looking down at her feels like someone turned has the sound back on.

They walk down the beach without speaking, side by side, Clint mostly staring at the way the sand clings to his wet feet. When they finally get back to the car, Natasha drives, bare footed, to the nearest motel and pays for a single shabby room with a double bed and a TV that’s seen better days. As she brings in her many hastily packed tote bags, he sits on the end of the bed and stares at his hands and the out-of-focus image of his feet beyond, stubborn grains of sand still clinging to them.

“Does everyone I know know how to do that?” he asks when she finally sits down next to him.

“Do what?”

“Make me feel better and worse at the same time. Lighter. Like,” he quirks his fingers half-heartedly and doesn’t look up, “like crying.”

“I don’t know,” she says quietly, taking his hands in hers and forcing him to meet her gaze. “Maybe only those who care enough about you to find out.”

 

He feels a little off kilter for the rest of the day, but Natasha seems unconcerned and keeps up a gentle stream of conversation with him, as well as the motel clerk and various shop assistants as she drags him around Wilmington in the dying light. She finds them a little restaurant run by a smiling, middle-aged, Latina woman who is delighted that Natasha speaks Spanish and insists on getting them to try a little of everything before, apparently – Clint’s Spanish is still terrible – complimenting Natasha on her fine choice in men.

“Eh, él está bien,” she says, shooting him an absurdly fond smile. The woman – Mariella according to her name tag – cackles delightedly before swatting Natasha on her shoulder.

“Don’t listen to her,” Mariella says to Clint, grinning widely. “Why, if I were twenty years younger…”

Natasha lets out a shocked laugh as Mariella gives him an appraising once-over and Clint blushes furiously.

“Bueno,” she continues, apparently pleased with herself. “You let me know if you need anything, ¿sí?”

“Sí,” Natasha replies, still laughing. She waits until Mariella has turned her back to sign  _you blush so_  and then frown before finger spelling D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S-L-Y.

Clint buries his head in his hands and Natasha laughs harder. “Don’t worry,” she says, patting his hand in a not entirely comforting way, “I’ll protect your virtue.”

Clint flips her the bird. Then, after a moments deliberation, he signs  _deliciously_  so she can use it next time she needs to torment him. He really is a masochist. 

“So,” she asks, once she’s practised ‘deliciously’ to Clint’s satisfaction and his blush has faded to non-mortifying levels, “I have a favour to ask.”

“What?” he says, around a mouthful of the best paella he’s ever had. Mariella might be alarmingly amorous for someone old enough to be his mother, but she sure as hell can cook.

“The Modern Language Department is having a fundraiser and I was wondering if you’d come as my plus one.”

He looks at her warily. The word ‘fundraiser’ in Clint’s mind is inextricably linked with Kate in ball gowns complaining about boring corporate drones and how much her feet hurt. And, after her eighteenth, Clint feels he’s suffered through enough high society small talk to last him a lifetime. Sure, academics might be marginally more interesting, but he feels the operative word there is ‘marginally’.

“There’ll be free food and it’ll be a Saturday night, so your obstetrics rotation won’t get fucked up.”

Clint groans. Seeing as he’s applied specifically for a children’s hospital in London, it’s really lucky he’d organised his obstetrics rotation as his last one of this year. He really, really,  _really_  wishes it he’d gone with paediatrics but unfortunately his foresight isn’t that good. He’s sure delivering babies is hugely rewarding and all that, but he’s not really sure he wants to get up close and personal with any vaginas that aren’t Natasha’s.

“If someone says ‘catch’ to me,” he says, for the hundredth time, “I genuinely think I’ll freak out.”

“You have good hand-eye coordination.” Natasha says in a maddeningly reasonable tone. “You’ll catch them.”

Clint glares at her half-heartedly.

“Anyway, it should be reasonably interesting – language students are generally decent conversationalists – and, a massive plus, I’ll get to see you in that suit of yours, which I’m sure will be devastatingly attractive.”

Occasionally Clint thinks Natasha is touched in the head. This is one of those times.

“Right,” he says sceptically, “But that’s only a plus for you.”

“Ah,” she says, arching her eyebrow as Mariella comes to clear their plates away, “but if you’re in a beautiful Dior suit, just imagine what  _I’ll_  be wearing.”

Clint doesn’t agree right then but he also doesn’t decline, which he’s sure is what Natasha was hoping for, and she drops the subject in favour of suggesting they take a week after his study abroad to go to Russia. Apparently her aunt and uncle will be there in September and she wants him to meet them. 

As far as subject changes go, he thinks this one makes the top ten for being Not What He Wanted To Hear. The idea of meeting anyone’s parents is terrifying to him, both for its inherent seriousness (and it’s not that he’s not freaking out about having to meet Jess’ parents because he  _so fucking is_ and they’re not even dating any more) but also because his experience with parental figures has been less than stellar. Not only was his own dad a shit, but Kate’s dad is a douchebag and Kate’s mom, while she was an utterly fantastic human being, died even before his own parents did. His own mom was amazing and he loved her so much, but all her good parenting was smothered by his father and the huge, violent shadow that he was in their house.

He’s not sure what he thinks Natasha’s aunt and uncle are going to do, what illusions they’ll shatter, but he’s not comfortable with finding out. Plus, that is a _whole lot of money_ he wasn’t planning on spending, Jesus Christ.

Natasha, of course, thinks he’s being stupid and informs him so in no uncertain terms.

“All that’ll happen is that Sasha will take you shooting or something and Vassa will feed you mountains of food,” she says later that night, climbing into the surprisingly narrow double bed in their motel. “And then we’ll explore St Petersburg. It’ll be fine.”

“I just – it feels weird.”

Natasha curls herself around him, slotting a leg between his and laying her head on his shoulder. “Why?”

“Because – because parents don’t like me, I’m – ”

“No,” Natasha cuts in sharply. “Clint, there is nothing wrong with you. If people don’t like you it’s not because of you, it’s because of them. You are a wonderful, fantastic person and there is no reason for Sasha and Vassa to dislike you.”

Clint’s hand tightens involuntarily on her arm, but he doesn’t say anything further. Experience tells him that he’s not wrong but then, experience never really prepared him for Natasha. Or Em. Or Kate.

“Plus,” Natasha says, dropping a kiss onto his collarbone, “Vassa has always assured me I have excellent taste in men and you’ll prove that quite nicely. I’d hate for her faith to be misplaced.”

“So I’m a trophy boyfriend?”

“Mmm,” she says, burrowing into his side, her voice muffled. “The best kind. Attractive, intelligent, and mine to keep.”

Clint snorts into her hair and pulls her closer and, when it’s clear that conversation is probably over for the night, he takes out his hearing aids, careful not to jostle Natasha too much. She’s used to it, of course, but it pays to be considerate.

The ensuing silence is close and comforting.

He knows, intellectually, that he isn’t as terrible as he (most of the time) thinks he is. And even when he does think so, he trusts Natasha enough to believe that she wouldn’t be with him without good reason. But a lifetime of waiting for the other shoe to drop has built up calluses and defence mechanisms that rarely allow for feelings of self-belief, which just goes to show how instrumental those first seven or so years of your life are. Clint’s known Kate longer than he knew his parents and she’s helped him deal with a lot of his shit, but even with that he’s only just about managed to become a partially functioning adult in the past three years.

Sometimes he thinks it should have taken less time – that the decision to be better should be immediately followed by  _being better_  – but he knows it doesn’t work that way. Two steps forward, one step back, and all that jazz.

Clint sighs and buries his face in Natasha’s hair. Today was a good day though; he doesn’t want to be thinking of this. Instead he thinks about the vast expanse of the ocean and how it shut his brain up for a while. How it reminded him of summer nights under the stars in Iowa. Barney had learnt the constellations in school once and would impart this wisdom as if it was the most precious thing in the world. 

They were still young back then; before Barney discovered cigarettes and the money that could be made selling dope and meth. Back when Barney still felt his little brother was worth protecting. When their dad had passed out from drinking and their mum had disappeared to nurse her bruises in her room, Barney would help Clint sneak out of the house and they’d walk out into Old Joe Simon’s field – carefully following the wheel tracks of the tractor so as not to damage the wheat – until they got to the tumbled down shed at the far end. It was mostly full of old farming tools and how it retained structural integrity no one knew, but nevertheless they’d climb up onto the roof and Barney would point out Orion and the Big Dipper and the North Star.

Clint hasn’t thought about that in  _years_.

“Natasha,” he says, his voice barely audible to himself but hopefully not too loud for Natasha.

“Mmm?”

Natasha’s voice is more a vibration than a sound Clint actually hears.

“Is it weird that sometimes I miss Iowa?”

He feels her shake her head against him but still she then sits up so he can see her face.

“No,” he sees her say, her teeth and eyes glittering in the ambient light. “No, Clint. It’s not.”

 

In the end, Clint agrees to go to Natasha’s work function. He doesn’t really want to – it’s not his idea of a good time – but Natasha has been so supportive and understanding of his crazy schedules and horrible night shifts that he feels he should support her in this. Plus, there’ll be free food and Natasha in a gorgeous dress, which are both massive plus points in his eyes. He has been banned from punching Ivan though, but he guesses he can’t have everything.

The fundraiser is being held in Chester Phillips Hall, one of the largest and smartest function rooms Culver has, and is a far classier event than anything the Medical Department would ever put together. Or at least that’s what Clint assumes, based entirely on the fact that Natasha’s practically forcing him to wear his dress shoes.

“Why is it,” he asks from where he’s sat on his bed, “that women take so much longer than men to get ready for stuff like this?”

Natasha is currently rifling through an alarmingly large make-up bag, which goes with her alarmingly large jewellery case and her larger than necessary selection of potential outfits. Clint had suggested they just meet at the venue, but Natasha hadn’t trusted him to actually wear his dress shoes – he has some pretty nice black loafer things that he  _totally wasn’t_  planning to wear instead. Anyway, Yelena had found yet another new boytoy – or maybe it was the same one? – so Natasha had decided that this would be easier all round.

“Because,” Natasha says patiently, “women get a disproportional amount of criticism regarding their appearance and have learnt to shift the annoyance over to something we can control.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we get fucked off about having to get ready rather than fucked of with increased numbers of guys telling us we look like shit,” she says shortly, before settling on an outfit combination she approves of and proceeding to strip off, revealing a rather lovely black strapless bra.

“Why don’t you have a mirror in your room?” she demands, picking up her make-up bag and jewellery.

“What the hell do I need a mirror in my room for?”

Natasha glares, but forgoes answering in favour of leaving the room, presumably to use the bathroom mirror. Clint eyes the explosion of shimmery material and discarded jewellery on his bed for a moment before sighing and pulling his suit from his wardrobe.

He sort of hates this thing. Like, he’s aware that it’s a good suit, he’s even aware that he looks good in it, but he sort of really wishes he didn’t own it, mostly because he didn’t buy it and its way better than anything he could afford. Clint doesn’t mind having nice stuff, as long as he paid for it. As long as he _earnt it_.

He’s halfway out of his own clothes when a loud squeak comes from down the corridor.

“What the hell?” he mutters to himself, stripping off his t-shirt just as Kate comes into his room. She’s wearing leggings, the Stars and Stripes t-shirt she got Em as a joke, and rather shell-shocked expression.

“Oh my God.”

“What happened?” Clint asks.

Kate waves her hand vaguely and guppies for a moment before saying in a rather reverential tone, “Boobs.”

“Boobs?” 

Clint’s fairly sure he heard wrong but at the same time there’s not much that you can mishear as boobs, regardless of how shitty your hearing is.

“Boobs happened,” she says more decisively, though she still looks a little dazed. “Specifically: your girlfriend’s. I’m still recovering.”

So Kate bumped into Natasha on her way to the bathroom. Clint grins. “They’re pretty magnificent, right?”

“So magnificent,” she sighs happily. “Would it be weird if I asked to touch them? They look touchable.”

“Oh, trust me, they’re very touchable, but we can find out if you want,” he says, still grinning. “Hey Natasha!”

Kate blanches and she makes frantic motions with her hands in an effort to get Clint to shut up without actually saying anything.

“What?” Natasha yells from the bathroom.

“Can Kate touch your – ”

Kate lunges at him, knocking him onto his bed and practically smothering him with her hands. 

“ _Shut up_ , jackass,” she hisses. “You’re making me sound like a fucking sex pest.”

“What?” Natasha says again, much closer this time and  _oh_.

Clint’s fairly sure she’s not actually finished, but her hair is in a deceptively simple looking bun-like style and the wings of her eyeliner are sharp and make her eyes look almost luminous. And there’s the fact that she’s still in her underwear.

He feels like he’s been punched in the gut. It’s not like he forgets that Natasha is ridiculously beautiful, but sometimes it hits him all over again. She’s the kind of beautiful you don’t have to explain; the kind that’s cinema-worthy, model-worthy. And she’s slumming it with him, holy shit.

“Christ,” Kate says. “You’re fucking unfair, you know that right?”

Natasha rolls her eyes like that’s the stupidest thing she’s heard. 

“I refuse to believe that you look like shit in make-up and underwear, Kate Bishop,” she says archly. “Now, if you’ve nothing substantial to say, I’m going to finish getting ready.”

She stalks out of the room again.

“She seems unnecessarily fucked off about something,” Kate says, lifting her hands from Clint’s face so he can speak, but Clint’s too wrapped up in the image of Natasha in flawless make-up and gorgeous underwear to pay much attention to what she’s saying.

“I don’t want to go to a fucking function,” he whines. “I want to skip to the part with the nasty fucking.”

“Stop thinking with your dick and pay attention,” Kate snaps, whacking him on the arm – harder than necessary in his opinion. “Go find out if she’s okay.”

“Huh?”

“ _Natasha_ ,” Kate says pointedly. “She’s being snappy and un-Natasha like.”

Clint thinks back. Natasha had come over early afternoon with her twelve million bags in tow. They’d chatted and she’d had wine and it was all reasonably normal in Clint’s opinion. But then… maybe she’d been a little mean about Yelena and her boytoy, and she’d been a little snappy about his jokes and less than forgiving when he’d complained about having to wear his dress shoes.

“D’you think it might mean we won’t have to go?” Clint asks.

Kate glares at him and Clint holds up his hands in supplication.

“I’m going, I’m going.”

He finds Natasha putting on her lipstick in the huge mirror in the bathroom. There’s a faint smell of what Clint assumes is hairspray mixed with the scent of Natasha’s perfume and she’s wearing a necklace and earrings now. All together it looks like she’s getting ready for the Oscars or something. He takes a moment to appreciate – once again – how lucky he is, before curling his hand around her hip and gently asking, “Are you alright?”

“Took you long enough to notice,” she says waspishly, rearranging the stands of hair that fall elegantly around her face.

Clint feels a stab of hurt and a smaller twinge of annoyance, but it’s a fair assessment and really, he’s got no right to be angry at her for something that’s true. So instead he kisses her shoulder and wraps his arm around her waist.

“Yeah,” he concedes. “But I noticed eventually.”

Natasha gaze meets his in the mirror and her expression is sceptical.

“Yes, okay,” he says, letting her go to hold up his hands in defeat. “Kate maybe yelled at me. In my defence, at least I listened to her. It’s how I’ve evolved into a semi-functioning adult human being. You should thank her.”

Natasha leans back against him, bare skin touching bare skin, a small smile gracing her otherwise annoyed expression.

“She’s like a better version of you.”

Well, Clint’s not going to argue with that.

“You should date her.”

“I think America would have something to say about that.”

Clint snorts and drops another kiss on her bare shoulder.

“C’mon, what’s up?”

Natasha sighs and pulls away from him, snapping shut make-up cases and packing everything away. 

“I like these sorts of thing, I do,” she says. “But it’s – ”

She stops and looks angrily at him for a moment before starting up again. Marshalling thoughts, Clint thinks inanely.

“You spend so long making yourself pretty, you know? And you do it for you, but you also do it because you’re expected to and ‘ugly’” – a sneer curls around the word – “female academics don’t get half as much attention. So I want to make an impression and I want to linguistically blindside stupid old white guys who think I’m just a pretty face, but also…”

Natasha sighs and almost rubs her forehead, before remembering that she’s done all her make-up and shouldn’t mess it up.

“Ivan’s going to be there. And no amount of war-paint or hot boyfriends is going to make me feel comfortable and in charge around him.”

Clint doesn’t really know what to say to that. He has no corresponding experience and he doesn’t want to offer empty platitudes; he knows from experience that they’re in no way helpful. And, to be honest, he didn’t know it had gotten that bad. So instead he just wraps himself around her and rests his chin on her shoulder. 

“I am still totally willing to punch him for you.”

Natasha smiles. “I know you are, but please don’t. I’d be sad if you were expelled because of Ivan Fucking Petrovich.”

“Ivan the Terrible,” Clint says, almost to himself, and Natasha laughs before patting him on the arm.

“C’mon, go get changed. I’m stealing Kate’s mirror.”

So Clint wrestles himself into his very expensive (and now slightly ill-fitting, thanks to his archer’s shoulders and the fact that he’s, y’know, not eighteen anymore) suit while Natasha, in all probability, gets slyly ogled by Kate as she uses the full length mirror in her room. He can hear them chatting; a soft background noise just loud enough for his hearing aids to pick up.

He’s just finished rooting around in his wardrobe for the hated dress shoes – and when he says rooting he means, of course, carefully unpacking them from the box they’ve been kept in since the last time he wore them, which has to be at least two years ago – when he looks up to find Natasha leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom door. She’s wearing a deep blue, knee-length dress in a satin-y fabric that highlights her curves, a pair black pumps with very high heels and the kind of expression that Clint’s still not used to being directed at him.

“Well,” she says, low and sultry, “don’t you look handsome.”

Her gaze sweeps over him in a highly approving manner before she steps up to straighten his tie. It’s blue, like her dress, though not really the right shade. Maybe it’s more purple, really.

“I knew that suit would make you look fucking gorgeous,” she murmurs, stroking down his lapels and leaning in to brush her lips against his jaw. “Jesus Christ.”

The top of her dress has these shapes cut out of it and Clint gently touches her collarbone though one.

“You’re one to fucking talk,” he replies. “Fucking hell. How do you expect me to concentrate on intelligent conversation when you look like this?”

“About as well as me,” she says, her gaze flitting over his face like she’s not sure what to look at. “C’mon. The quicker we leave, the quicker we can come back and fuck.”

Clint groans quietly, but pulls away to grab his wallet and keys and they’re halfway out the door when Kate says loudly, “I feel I should be giving someone a talk about intentions. Or threatening someone, or imposing a curfew.”

“What?”

Kate clasps her hands in front of her in a parody of a proud mother seeing her kid off to the prom – a pose Clint only knows from TV.

“My baby’s all grown up and off to have sex at fancy dinner parties,” she all but wails, dabbing at fake tears.

Natasha snorts out a laugh and Clint scowls. “Shut up, Bishop.”

“No really, you’re wearing dress shoes. I’m proud.”

Clint rolls his eyes and makes to leave.

“Wait!”

“This better be important, Katie,” he says.

“No, it is. Just wait two seconds.” Kate tears off through the house and they can hear her opening and closing drawers in her room until a triumphant ‘aha!’ floats through the house. Clint and Natasha exchange confused looks.

“Here,” Kate says, coming up to fiddle with Clint’s collar.

“What are you doing?”

“Collar stays.”

“What?”

“I’m putting in collar stays.”

Clint raises an eyebrow as Natasha takes whateveritis from Kate’s hand and goes to fiddle with Clint’s collar on the other side.

“You know how the tips always curl up?” she says. “You put in these little guys – ”

“Collar stays,” Natasha supplies helpfully.

“ – and the collar stays.”

Kate nods in approval, re-straightening Clint’s tie.

“Go,” she says once she’s done. “Be cultured. Wear condoms.”

 

The event _is_ classier than anything the Medical Department would host. There are dresses much fancier than the one Natasha is wearing – “Though no suits better than yours,” she inform him – and a huge amount of very intelligent people milling around talking about funding and syntax and linguistic changes over time. And that’s only within the first five minutes.

Natasha introduces him to a variety of her colleagues, all of whose names he fails to retain, before spotting Professor Berlinskaya.

“Наталья!” Professor Berlinskaya calls over the crowd, “как дела?”

Professor Berlinskaya is nothing like Clint pictured her. She’s short – shorter than Natasha – with fly-away brown hair and heavy silver rings on each of her fingers. She waves her hands when she talks and trails scarves after her that occasionally get stepped on or caught on people’s bags. If Clint hadn’t known she was a celebrated linguist, he’d’ve guessed her to be an art or theatre teacher, the kind Steve would talk highly of.

Natasha and the professor exchange pleasantries – in Russian, of course – before Natasha pulls Clint forward with the rather sparse introduction of, “This is Clint.”

“Ah,” says Professor Berlinskaya, whose accent is much thicker than Natasha's, “so you’re Clint. Natalia mentions you often.”

“She does?” Clint says, bemused, as he shakes her hand.

“Oh indeed,” Professor Berlinskaya says, waving her free hand and accidentally dipping her scarf in her wine. “‘At least your writing is as bad as Clint’s’ and ‘Clint’s training to be a doctor’ and ‘Clint’s Russian is terrible’. Apparently you do archery. She’s very appreciative of that.”

Professor Berlinskaya squeezes Clint’s bicep and he shoots Natasha a slightly alarmed look only to find a fierce blush sitting high on her cheekbones.

“She never calls you her boyfriend though,” Professor Berlinskaya continues. “But then, there’s nothing very ‘boy’ about you, is there Clint?”

Clint’s alarmed look grows stronger and Professor Berlinskaya positively cackles before taking pity on him and changing the subject. She asks about his degree and how his clinic rotations are going, and somehow they meander through subjects until they’re discussing bureaucracy and residency permits. At some point Natasha is drawn into conversation by someone else – though not before Clint manages to sign across to her _you blush so deliciously_ , because turnabout’s fair play – and she wanders off with a smile and a pat on his arm.

She returns half an hour later with a Coke and a plate of food. Professor Berlinskaya – “Call me Tania, dear,” – smiles at them indulgently as they have a minor squabble over the last pickle.

“Oй, Иван!” Tania suddenly calls out to someone over Clint’s shoulder and he _feels_ Natasha tense, “Come here if you please.”

The man who approaches is a couple of inches shorter than Clint, with dark hair and a Roman nose. He’s not unattractive, but he has an air of contempt that surrounds him like perfume, which means his hearing _didn’t_ fail him and Tania really did say ‘Ivan’. Clint wonders how it is that Tania apparently can’t see his arrogance and sneering contempt, but then she manages to knocks over three empty glasses on the table behind her and it seems more understandable.

“Ivan,” Tania says, straightening up from where she was moving all the glasses behind her out of her reach, “I know this isn’t really the time or place, but I wanted to let you know that I recieved your report and your email, thank you. You’ll need to be free from June 28th, but we’ll talk about that on Monday. Now, meet Natalia’s Clint, a most charming young man.”

Ivan’s handshake is firm, but his gaze is challenging and flits across to where Natasha’s standing to Clint’s left and he suddenly understands why it was that she’d decided against the strapless green dress Clint was really hoping she’d wear. Still, becoming ‘Natalia’s Clint’ makes up for it somehow.

“And now that there’s someone I feel I can leave you with – Natalia, can I borrow you for a moment?”

Natasha nods curtly and Clint suddenly finds himself alone with Ivan Fucking Petrovich.

“So you’re ‘Natalia’s Clint’,” Ivan says eventually. There’s no particular inflection in the sentence, but Clint gets the impression that Ivan doesn’t think much of him being ‘Natalia’s’ anything.

“Yep,” he says in return, barely refraining from obnoxiously popping the ‘p’.

“The medic.”

“Yes.”

“What rotation are you on?”

“Obstetrics.”

Ivan frowns.

“Delivering babies,” Clint clarifies. “Pregnancy complications, sexual health, post-natal care, that sort of stuff.”

“Ah,” Ivan says in a tone of voice that implies that the whole subject is beneath him. “And how many babies have you delivered so far?”

Clint is almost impressed by how much his tone suggests his question to be ‘how many vaginas have you had your hands up recently?’ He suddenly completely understands how working with this guy must be an absolute nightmare.

“Three,” Clint says shortly. “And no one said ‘catch’. One mother did suffer uterine rupture and was placed under emergency care, but both she and the baby survived. A little boy, seven pounds, one ounce. They called him Andre James.”

There’s something in Ivan’s face that suggests that he didn’t actually expect Clint to know anything about medicine – as if he thought Clint or, more likely, Natasha, was lying about what he studies. Clint wonders just how low Ivan’s opinion of Natasha is.

“Is everyone getting along?” Tania says as she sidles up with Natasha in tow. Ivan nods, a small thing full of contempt, and Clint shrugs, quickly signing _I want to punch him_ to Natasha.

Tania misses Clint’s input as she hands out fresh glasses of wine to everyone, but Ivan notices and the disdain in his posture is unmissable. Clint feels as though any worth Ivan thought he might have has suddenly been cancelled out by the fact that he’s _disabled_.

Clint politely turns down the wine and instead signs, _No really_ , _please can I punch him?_ not caring if he seems rude.

Natasha smiles, but shakes her head.

“You know,” Ivan says silkily, “it’s rude to exclude people from group conversations.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Clint says, all faux-apology.

_Douchebag,_ he signs and Natasha giggles.

“Oh, Natalia mentioned you know American Sign Language!” Tania says, having finally noticed Clint signing. “I must ask you about sentence structure and syntax, I find the whole thing fascinating.”

Clint explains the differences as best as he can, using practical examples when he has to, and otherwise insulting Ivan as much as he can get away with. Natasha laughs and helps as and when she can, and Ivan’s face turns more and more sour as Tania keeps him in the conversation enough to ensure he can’t leave without seeming rude. The fact that Clint can talk intelligently about any language seems to irk him, so Clint drags the conversation on for as long as he can and eventually they only break up because people are starting to leave and Natasha’s expression has taken a heated turn that means that they’ll have to go soon because something highly inappropriate is going to happen.

Tania hugs Clint goodbye, which surprises him no end. But she’s friendly and kind, if a little scatty, and Clint can see why Natasha speaks so highly of her. She’s a little like Bruce, he suspects; willing to go that bit further for her students, even the shitty ones like Ivan, who escapes Tania’s circle and disappears as soon as Natasha mentions leaving.

“It was lovely to meet you, Clint,” Tania says, clutching his biceps in a way that makes him think of well-meaning aunts. “I’d love to speak more to you about ASL, but I suspect Natalia has her own plans.”

Clint can’t work out if that’s a knowing remark or if she’s just being… well,  _her_.

“You can always contact the folks over at Deaf Soc,” Clint says, sidestepping anything about Natasha and her ‘plans’. “They’d be happy to help.”

Tania waves that comment away.

“It’s curiosity only. I’m not sure I have enough time to pursue it properly. I wouldn’t want to waste their time.”

Clint decides to drop it. He knows Tania is doing some big research trip this summer, something Natasha turned down working on, so she’s probably not lying and now that Ivan isn’t there to piss off he’s sort of done talking about it. His hearing, or lack thereof, is not normally something Clint brings up in casual conversation. It makes him itchy and uncomfortable, like everyone’s staring at him.

“That was great.” Natasha loops her arm through his and leans in, satisfied. “Did you see his face?”

From some distant part of his memory, Clint hears Jess say  _wanker_. He snorts. He’s not completely sure what the word means, but he’s fairly sure it fits.

“What?” Natasha asks, smiling up at him.

“Nothing. Jess just popped into my head saying ‘wanker’.”

Natasha laughs. “Wanker sounds about right.” 

It’s cool outside, the late spring air brisk after the close warmth of the event hall, and Natasha presses closer into Clint’s side as they head towards her car.

“You know,” Natasha says as she unlocks her little Honda, “you’re never more attractive than when you’re talking about something you know well.”

Clint turns wide eyes towards her over the roof of the car. “What?”

“You’re not self-conscious. You’re the same when you’re doctoring and when you do archery. You stop caring what people think. You stand up straighter.”

Clint stares at her, not entirely sure what to do with that information. She smiles at him, gently.

“Get in the car, Clint.”

Clint does as she says.

Clint finds reminders that attractiveness is more than just physical appearance slightly jarring. Not because he thinks people are wrong – far from it, Clint finds forceful personalities much more attractive than ‘beautiful’ people – but because, like most other things, life has taught him otherwise. When all your dad does is berate your mum for the bruises he gave her and that she can’t hide, eventually you decide that the fact that your mum is smart as hell must not matter all that much.

He knows better, but he still needs a reminder every now and again.

“Hey,” Natasha says from the driver’s seat. “You’re thinking too much.”

“Sorry.”

Natasha reaches over the console and takes his hand. “No apologising. Just let me compliment you every now and again.”

“It  _is_  a rare occurrence,” Clint says, trying to dredge up the good mood his brain just tried to destroy.

Laughing, Natasha lets go of his hand to punch him on the arm. “Shut up, you’re making me sound like a hardass bitch.”

“Well,” Clint draws the word out, his entire posture saying  _if the shoe fits._

Natasha makes an affronted noise and, with one hand rock steady on the steering wheel, proceeds to dig her fingers into Clint’s ribs until he’s shying away, laughing and occasionally (much to his mortification) yelping, pressing up against the car door in a vain attempt to avoid her onslaught.

He’s gasping for air when she finally relents and any sudden movement she makes has him twitching away from her, which of course makes her laugh even more.

“Christ, you’re so  _mean_ ,” Clint gripes as he gets out in front of his place.

“Aww, you love me,” Natasha says, unlocking the front door with her copy of his key.

And Clint stops, half in and half out of the door. Because she’s been cautious of phrases like that around him, and him around her, like constant reminders might make him backtrack. But Natasha said it so casually then and there wasn’t any skip in his head, it didn’t make him tense up in the anticipation of the ‘ha, joking’ he’s always assumed would follow. He’d just _accepted it._

“What?” Natasha asks, turning around as soon as she notices he’s no longer behind her.

Clint looks her in the eye, trying to will the knowledge that’s just exploded across his mind into the space between them.

“I know,” he says.

The smile that blooms over her face is the most beautiful she’s ever worn.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint isn't the only one who worries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been beta'd by **AlphaFlyer**. It also contains sex! (Sorry about how slow this is guys, but I promise it hasn't been forgotten.)

It’s a Monday and Clint is at Natasha’s because Bruce had started emailing him every day with variations on HAVE YOU BOOKED YOUR FLIGHTS YET? and when Clint had complained to Natasha about it, she’d hauled him back to her place to “book the damn things, солнышко. There’s a limit to how much the department will cover for trans-Atlantic flights.”

Apparently he might have left it a little late. And by ‘left’ he means ‘has been procrastinating wildly because having flights would make it real and the idea makes him panicky’. He’s really fucking happy that a) Natasha realises this without him having to tell her and b) doesn’t call him on his ridiculousness, just sits him down and helps him through all the options of airport and airline and transfers and baggage allowance and Jesus Christ, he never thought it would be  _this_  complicated.

But now he has a confirmation email he’s forwarded to Bruce and a seat on the 18:23 United 722 flight out of Washington Dulles to London Heathrow on the 28th of June, as well as a flight to St Petersburg from London Gatwick, and back to Washington via Moscow. Because snap decisions are totally Clint’s thing (they’re not) so apparently he’s visiting Natasha’s family. Just to make everything more terrifying.

So to calm down he’s currently sitting on the toilet, running through all the bones and muscles in the human body while Natasha takes a bath.

“Stop it,” Natasha says, from where she’s disappearing into mounds of bubbles. “I can hear you freaking out from here.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Clint says, surprisingly calmly. And he’s not. Not really, not anymore. It’s hard to freak out when he can see Natasha smiling at him from the bath, happy that he’s agreed to meet her folks. It’s hard to freak out surrounded by the smell of citrus and the quiet sound of Nina Simone. And, like archery and hitting things, naming the bones of the body helps quiet his mind.

There’s a gentle sloshing sound as Natasha sits up a little higher in the bath, her breasts appearing and disappearing through the swell of the bubbly water. Her hair is mostly dry, piled on top of her head, but tendrils have escaped to stick wetly to her skin and a flush spreads across her face and down her neck.

“Take your pants and socks off,” she says.

Clavicle, acromion, coracoid process, greater tubercle, lesser tubercle, scapula – wait.

“What?”

Natasha smiles at him, knowing. “Take you pants and socks off. Put your feet in.”

She sticks her foot out of the water and Clint understands. He strips off his jeans and turns on the toilet seat, sticking his feet into the bath. Natasha immediately presses her toes against his calf and smiles. She’d suggested he join her, but her bath is hardly big enough for her, let alone him, and definitely not big enough for the both of them. Plus, unless you’re actually washing, what do you  _do_  in a bath? Clint’s never understood people’s ability to just  _soak_. It seems pointless and boring and you  _prune_.

Humerus, he thinks, medial epicondyle, lateral epicondyle – 

“What are you doing?”

Clint starts. Natasha had been poking him with her big toe and he hadn’t really noticed.

“Naming bones,” he says, fiddling with the taps. He pours a blast of hot water into the bath right onto their entwined feet and Natasha lets out a muffled shriek, jerking away and causing the water to slosh alarmingly.

“Sorry.”

Natasha snorts, settling back with her feet against his ankles. “And you say you’re not freaking out.”

She lifts her leg out of the water and wiggles her toes in his face. 

“What bones are these then?” she asks.

He takes her foot in his hand and gently strokes her big toe. 

“Distal phalange,” he says, eyebrow raised and with the most Barry White-ish voice he can manage. Natasha snorts but smiles, so he continues, minus the Barry White voice, through her foot and to her ankle. He slides off the toilet lid to continue up her leg – her skin slick with bubble water and so warm and soft – but the water is too high for him to be able to continue past her thigh without falling in. Not that it matters, because she curls her arm around his shoulders and pulls him in for a kiss and he ends up half in the bath anyway.

“Now I’m all wet,” he pouts, gesturing to his t-shirt sleeve that’s seeping water and the wet stripe across his back from her arm.

“Aww,” she laughs. “Poor baby.”

She kisses him again. “How about you go get me some wine? Seeing as you’re not going to allow me to sex you up in the bath.”

“Have you ever had sex in a bath?” Clint asks. “It’s really fucking uncomfortable. And, like, messy; water everywhere. I like my sex without the tidy-up afterwards.”

“Lazy.”

“ _Practical_ ,” Clint insists before pulling a face. “And that’s the first time I’ve ever argued for practicality during sex.”

Natasha laughs again and Clint basks in the sound for a moment. 

“Go get me wine, boy,” she says in an imperious tone, pointing at the door.

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

Clint throws a sloppy salute in Natasha’s direction and makes for the kitchen, only to be stopped short when coming into the front room by Yelena, sitting on the couch with a guy.

“Oh,” Clint says inanely, “hi.”

Yelena’s grin is wide and teasing, and he doesn’t understand why until she gives him a very deliberate once over.

“I’m not wearing pants, am I?” Clint asks, resigned.

“And your t-shirt is wet.” Yelena says. “But at least your boxers are nice.”

His boxers _are_ nice. They have bullseyes on them. Kate got them for him as a joke one year, but they’re hella comfy and super flattering, so joke’s on her. Clint feels smug for a moment, before realising that that’s really not helping right now.

The guy on the couch looks amused. Clint wonders if he’s one of Yelena’s boytoys – though he looks about thirty years too old to be called ‘boy’.

“Natasha’s um, having a bath,” he says, realising too late that that isn’t helping at all. “I’ll just – ”

He waves his hand behind him, and disappears to grab some sweats and a dry t-shirt. A little warning would be nice.

Attempt number two goes much better, though Yelena smiles at him disarmingly the entire time. The guy is Grigor Pchelintsov; he apparently works in Culver’s accounts department and Yelena doesn’t say but Clint is pretty sure they’re fucking. But eh, who cares? He seems friendly enough and Yelena’s an adult. Clint doesn’t care who she’s fucking as long as she’s happy. Though he does hope Grigor isn’t married; that’s the type of mess no one needs.

Seeing as he’s on a quest for wine anyway, he grabs a glass for both Grigor and Yelena while he starts up the coffee machine – which is new, he notes, and handily the same one as Kate’s, so at least he knows how to work it.

“Tea?” Yelena asks when she sees him with a mug. Yelena finds it endlessly amusing that Jess got Clint into tea, if only sort of, so she always asks.

“Coffee,” he replies. “I like the new machine.”

Yelena pulls her feet onto her seat and turns to face him properly over the back of the couch.

“She bought it because of you,” she says. “It was on sale, but still.”

Clint stares at her, then down at his mug.

“You hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“Uh,” Clint says, not really sure of the correct response to such an unambiguous statement. “Isn’t this a little late?”

“She bought a coffee machine because of you,” Yelena says, her face friendly but her tone brooking no argument. “Before she’s invested, she looks after herself. After she’s invested, I come in.”

Clint stares at Yelena a moment longer. She can be very scary if she wants, much like Natasha can be. He wonders if it’s a Russian thing.

“Just so you know,” Yelena says gently.

“Clint!” comes Natasha’s voice from the bathroom. “Phone!”

Clint nods once at Yelena. “I have no intention of hurting her,” he says, because Yelena strikes him as the type of person who needs to hear it out loud so as to have proof to fling at you later if you go back on your word.

Clint is very happy to give her his word.

Yelena nods, smiles, and waves him away.

Clint’s phone is vibrating away somewhere under the sink, and Natasha just peers out of the bath with a mischievous look on her face.

“You could have picked up,” Clint says, handing her her wine and rooting around for his phone.

“But then I would get cold.”

Clint rolls his eyes and drops a kiss on her head before looking at his phone. Kate’s contact picture stares back at him, cross-eyed and gurning.

“I’ll have you know you’re interrupting something very important,” he says as soon as he picks up, taking off his pants again to sit on the toilet with his feet in the water. Natasha immediately wraps her feet around his ankles.

“It’s worth it, I promise,” Kate says, and her breathless excitement makes Clint sit up straighter. Natasha gives him a quizzical look.

“Yeah?”

“I made the shortlist,” she says, and Clint can  _hear_  her grin. “For the UNDP internship.”

“Holy shit Katie!” he exclaims, giving Natasha an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Congratulations!”

There’s a loud sloshing sound as Natasha scrambles to reach the phone and there’s a moment where Clint can’t make anything out properly because both Natasha and Kate are talking over each other.

“I knew it!” Natasha yells, grabbing Clint’s phone out of his hand. “I knew it! I told you you didn’t need help! This is brilliant, you’re going to be  _amazing_.”

“I haven’t got it yet,” Clint only just hears, tinny and small out of his phone speaker.

“You will,” Natasha says firmly. “We’ll quiz you until you know everything backwards. You’ll be amazing.”

Clint tries to take the phone back from Natasha, but she jerks away from him, sticking her tongue out before continuing to talk with Kate about how to dress and good impressions and things that it’s good to know when working for international organisations. Clint would mind, but he can’t help Kate with this and Natasha can. Plus Natasha is curled against his shins with her arm wrapped around his legs and her head resting on his knees, her skin warm and wet. 

Today… today is good. Natasha is smiling and Kate made the shortlist and today Susan Richards gave birth to little Franklin Benjamin Richards after two miscarriages and her husband was so happy he cried.

He smiles down at Natasha and gently curls his fingers into her damp hair. 

Yeah, today is good.

 

Clint’s life is generally hectic, and he’s not the most observant person in the world anyway, so it takes him a little while to notice that something is off with Em. In his defence, Em might not be the  _most_ emotionally constipated person he knows (Barton’s have that shit  _down_ ) but she’s definitely in the top five. That being said, no one can hide forever and after a week or two the hints become enough that even he can’t ignore them. 

She’s the same as always when Kate is there; snarky and smiling and sarcastic. But when Kate leaves the room, or when Em turns up before Kate’s back from the library, she’ll occasionally shoot Clint looks that he’s not entirely sure he understands. It’s like she’s on the verge of saying something, but hasn’t quite got as far as opening her mouth yet. More to the point, she’s trying to say something to  _him_ , which he find baffling in the extreme and it probably half the reason it took him so long to notice. Em doesn’t  _do_  the whole feelings thing with him, and in those rare moments she does, it tends to be awkward and stilted, ending in some sort of physical exercise as if the awkward and  _feelings_  can be sweated out if only they try hard enough.

Plus, there have been a lot of very small children in Clint’s life over the past month or so. And small children are  _exhausting_.

“Em’s being weird,” Clint says, apropos of nothing. 

It’s Saturday evening and Natasha had bullied Logan into giving Clint the day off. Clint  _thought_  it was so he could have a lie in, but it turned out Natasha’s plan was to go to Claytor Lake State Park and try to teach him to swim. She’d even bought him trunks. They’re purple and Clint blames Kate for  _everything_.

“Weird how?”

But now Natasha’s sat at the table watching him make curry, dressed in one of his old Archery Club t-shirts and some pants from Camden Market in London which is ‘totally somewhere you should go when you’re there because it’s great’. She also has on the same teasing smirk she’s been wearing basically all day; swimming lessons had quickly devolved into water fights interspersed with casual make-out sessions which they got told off for by some woman because they were ‘setting a bad example’. Stupid middle-aged Republicans allergic to fun.

“I dunno how to explain. She just keeps  _looking_  at me.”

“I’m looking at you now.”

Clint turns to find Natasha giving him a very suggestive look. A frisson of heat zings down Clint’s spine but he manages a dismissive, “Well, Em doesn’t look at me like  _that,_ ” which makes Natasha pout prettily. Which leads to another jolt of heat. _Not_ the effect Clint was hoping for. Why couldn’t she have started this shit  _before_  the fire was introduced to the cooking process? Natasha ruins so many meals.

“Okay,” she says, dialling down her hotness factor to levels Clint can deal with when cooking. “So what then?”

She gets up to get plates and cutlery for the table, while Clint finishes off his curry with some lemon juice he’d come across in a cupboard. He also finds a candle, so shoves it into an old wine bottle and sets in on the table. Natasha smiles at him and he gives her a lopsided grin back. He’s kind of shit at romantic – cooking food that doesn’t kill you is about as far as he gets – but sometimes he wants to make the effort and he likes that Natasha sees that.

“Well, it’s almost like… I dunno. She wants to say something? To me? She sort of hangs around sometimes, looking sort of frowny and angry and then she leaves. It’s weird.”

“Well, have you asked her?” Natasha says, digging into her curry. “This is really good, by the way.”

“Always with the surprise,” Clint says with exaggerated sadness, “and no, of course I’ve not asked her.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Well then. Do that.”

Clint shifts in his seat, taking a bite of curry to avoid having to answer.

“It’s okay to be concerned,” Natasha says gently, reaching across the table to give his hand a quick squeeze. “Maybe she just needs a little push.”

“When have you ever known Em  _not_ to do exactly what she wants?”

“Just because someone looks strong and on-it all the time doesn’t mean they actually are. Everyone has hang-ups.”

Clint smiles ruefully. “Some more than most.”

“Hey now,” Natasha nudges his foot with her own. “Not today. Today is for fun and make-outs and the acknowledgement of how nice I am for  _not_  getting you bright pink Speedos.”

Clint narrows his eyes at her. “You wouldn’t.”

“I  _didn’t_. That’s not the same as wouldn’t.” She smiles impishly as she gently traces patterns on his calf with her toe. “I think I’d rather enjoy the view.”

Clint blushes, because he always does when Natasha says things like this, and Natasha’s grin widens.

“We could find out how far down your blush goes.”

He blushes harder but manages to roll his eyes. “You  _know_  how far down it goes.”

“Hmm, true.” She taps her fork against her lips like she’s working out a particularly difficult problem. “But maybe I’d like reminding.” Her foot trails higher until it’s resting just shy of his crotch. “See if I can make it go further.” She presses gently against him, just enough to make him shift on his chair, before removing her foot and sitting up straight again. “For science, of course.”

“Of course,” Clint echoes. Natasha’s nipples are visible through her t-shirt and Clint would love to do something about that but he’s distracted and tired. It would be shitty of him to start something he can’t finish right now.

“Though,” she continues, infuriatingly calmly, “it would be irresponsible to conduct any scientific experiment without proper planning. Or the correct equipment.” 

 _Proper planning_. Clint wants to kiss her for that. He’s never dated someone who’s been so in tune with everything he doesn’t say – and he’s aware that he doesn’t say _a lot_. On the other hand, he’s also never dated someone so intent on making him lose his mind, one way or another.

“I swear, if you buy me pink Speedos I’ll…” he starts before trailing off when he can’t think of anything. Natasha gives him the kind of smirk that means she knows she’s won.

“You’ll do what, exactly, солнышко?”

Clint’s dignity is pretty much shot but he manages to salvage  _something_ long enough to sit up straight, a blush still staining his cheeks, and say archly, “I’ll stop cooking for you. Eat your curry.”

 

The next morning, Clint wakes up earlier than he usually would, a sort of low-level worry gnawing at the pit of his stomach. Yesterday was the first time he’d voiced his concerns over Em to anyone, but he’d been carrying it around much longer than that. And while Em worrying about anything this much _is_ alarming, what’s bothering Clint most is that it’s something that she thinks Clint can either help with or is responsible for – and he has  _no idea what that could be._

Clint’s ill equipped for these kinds of situations; he’s a run-from-your-problems kind of guy, always has been. Was _taught_ to be – if not ‘formally’, then through endless exposure. Because what else had his dad been doing but endlessly running from his problems? Drinking until they were nothing more than an itch in the back of his head. And Clint knows it’s true because he did it himself; too young to know what he was doing, or why, or that there was any other way. It’s a habit learned too young for him to break it easily, but the older he gets the more he finds people he _wants_ to try for. And that’s a whole other bundle of terrifying emotions he’d rather not poke at but he doesn’t want to be a coward, not now that there are people he actually cares for.

Grandstanding doesn’t change who he is though, and while he might want to be braver and more capable it doesn’t stop him from being gun-shy.

He’ll give Em today to come out with it. If she doesn’t, he promises himself he’ll make a plan of action to find out what’s wrong. A compromise, between who he is and who he wants to be. It makes him feel a bit guilty, but it also gives him time. Little victories.

When Clint finally stumbles into the kitchen he finds Em drinking coffee (she glares at Clint as soon as he notes this, and he holds up his hands to pre-empt the warning about drinking from the pot) while Kate fills out form after form for the UNDP Internship.

“Urgh,” Clint says, knocking over his mug before he even gets any coffee in it. “It’s too early for _forms_.”

Em makes a noise in agreement. Kate just waves his complaints away. “I need them done by Tuesday and I needed Em to provide details about her family.”

“Her family? Why does the UN need _Em’s_ family history?”

“Security, apparently,” she says vaguely. “Gotta send Juan David a card saying ‘thank you for not smuggling your best friend and daughter into the US illegally because you’ve made my job application process so much easier’.”

“Huh?”

Em rolls her eyes. “I’m not here illegally, which reflects well on Kate.”

And because he’s dumb and not awake enough yet, Clint is _this close_ to asking why Amalia and Juan David needed a _child_ to get into the US when surely the marriage certificate and their credentials would have been enough. But he’s not _an idiot_ (mostly) so he doesn’t. Instead he takes a too-large gulp of coffee and almost chokes. Em looks at him like she knew what he was thinking anyway.

Clint shrugs and busies himself making tea for Natasha from the wide selection that has slowly been taking over one of the cupboards. He picks the Russian stuff, because Natasha’s tastes can vary dramatically throughout the day but morning tea is always the same.

“Where’ll you stay?” Clint hears Em ask.

It’s weird, he realises, that neither he nor Em have asked this before, despite the fact that Kate’s been gunning for this internship for quite some time now. But then again, Clint’s been busy. He’ll chalk it up to that.

“Susan’s,” Kate replies. “Should be fine. Though, hey Clint?” He turns. “You remember Navid?”

Clint nods in response. Navid is a friend of Susan’s. Clint met him when Susan had visited them about two years ago. Nice guy, if way posher than Clint was used to.

“They’re dating.”

“Susan and Navid?”

“Yeah. She didn’t want to say at Christmas ‘cause in all likelihood dad’ll not be too pleased.”

Natasha shuffles into the room, giving Clint the stink eye because apparently he was too slow with the tea. He smiles and drops a kiss on her head before passing it over.

“Why? ‘Cause he’s from…” Clint scrunches up his face but can’t remember where Navid is from, “wherever he’s from?”

Em looks up at that. She’s not met Kate’s dad either, though Kate insists that’s because you only come to the Bishop’s for Christmas if you have nowhere better to be, and Em has _several_ places better.

“Egypt,” comes the reply, Kate rifling through papers until she finds what she needs. “Nah, it’s probably because his family is both more successful and more influential than ours and that would piss dad off. Plus, you know, no one needs to meet dad until they absolutely have to.”

Clint can’t argue with that. He drinks his coffee instead.

“I’m going to have a shower,” Natasha says quietly, getting up and putting her cup in the sink. Kate follows a few minutes later, muttering something about passports and bank statements and where the hell is it that she put them both now?

A thick, sort of sleepy, silence descends on the kitchen and Clint can feel Em’s eyes on him as he pours himself another cup of coffee. He wonders if this is a good time to ask what’s bothering her. Then he wonders _how_ to ask and gets stuck.

“You ever been to Susan’s?” Em asks, startling him out of his musings.

“Nah,” he replies. “Never been to New York.” 

Clint thinks about it and then shrugs. 

“Never been anywhere really.”

“‘S nice, New York,” Em mutters into her mug. “Big, you know? Not like here. Or – or Las Cruces.”

Clint’s not sure what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything. They sit in silence for a little longer, but it’s strained now and he can tell Em is working up to saying something. He tries to look encouraging but internally he’s already shying away. He’s not prepared for this; he wants Natasha as back up, or Kate, or anyone really. Anyone more emotionally secure than he is because Clint Barton doesn’t do  _problems_ , not even a little.

Em opens her mouth, a small frown on her face, but just as she looks to have mustered the courage to speak, Kate breezes back into the room clutching yet more paper and Em snaps her mouth shut. She doesn’t quite flinch – Em’s not one for flinching – but it’s a close thing. She shifts awkwardly in her chair, shooting Clint a fugitive look before looking away again.

It’s so unlike her that Clint is forced to admit that if he wants to help out, he’s just going to have to bite the bullet and  _ask._  As he leaves to kick Natasha out of the shower so he can get ready for archery, the new worry becomes  _how_ and what to say.

 

It’s a nice day, sunny and warm, so Natasha decides to accompany Clint to archery practice. It’s one of the best things about her having a full time job, over when she was studying. Student Natasha didn’t really have the time for just sitting around, and she couldn’t work outside because apparently the light made seeing her laptop screen too difficult. But now the joy of working nine to five means that she has gained the most wonderful (and jealously coveted, in Clint’s case) of novelties –  _free time_ , which she mostly spends either reading or hanging out with Clint. Or going to the gym, but she does that when he’s at work.

So today she’ll probably sit somewhere against a tree off to the side, reading and occasionally heckling him. It’s mostly stopped being a distraction, though today she’s wearing cut-off shorts, so today might be harder.

They’re almost at the range when Clint realises that Natasha has been spending probably the last five minutes trying to catch his attention. So much for the cut-offs being a distraction.

“Sorry, what?”

Natasha looks worried. “You okay? You were zoning out on me.”

“I’m not – it’s just – ”

“It’s America, right? I saw this morning what you meant about her seeming a little off.” Natasha loops her arm through his in an uncharacteristically  _couple-y_  gesture. They’re not really a couple-y couple. “She’s really worrying you, isn’t she?”

“Well, yeah,” he admits. “It’s just – weird. I mean, what – what can  _I_  do? People don’t – I’m not the one people go to.”

“I’d come to you,” Natasha says gently, leaning against him and squeezing his arm.

“Yeah but – ”

“Yeah but nothing,” she says firmly, hands tightening further with a little shake to force his eyes to hers. “Even before we were dating – back when you were just my hot ASL tutor – I’d have come to you.”

She has a tiny smirk on her face, but her eyes are honest and kind and – yeah, there was the time with the dress and  _the Two Towers_ , but there were also the times she’d be stressed and angry about her thesis and would crash his Wednesday Café Sessions not to study but just to read heavy Russian novels and eat cake.

“Maybe you don’t always  _say_  the right thing, but you’re honest and solid and  _there_. You don’t judge.”

They’ve reached the entrance to the range – a dedicated section of Murrayfield, one of Culver’s sports grounds – but Natasha stops before they can go in. 

“America might come to you – ” Clint snorts at this, and Natasha smiles before continuing “ – or you might want to ask, but don’t  _worry_  so much. You don’t have to have all the answers, you just have to care. And you’re very good at that.”

She wraps her arms around his waist and smiles up at him, but Clint can’t do more than stare at her.

Sometimes Natasha just  _says_  stuff like this and Clint feels like his heart has seized in his chest. Because sometimes he feels that caring is all he does and, inter-dispersed with self-loathing and anxiety and mild panic, that’s all he’s capable of. He can’t talk fancy to make things better like Natasha, or fix things with money like Kate, or instinctively know the correct time for a sharp ‘stop overthinking, Clint’ like Em does. And how useless is that? Just caring can’t keep you safe; can’t warm you or feed you or stop you getting punched.

And now Natasha is saying that’s all he needs, that what he can offer is enough… Clint might not be completely convinced, but at the same time, the fact that Natasha believes it is makes him feel a little lightheaded. 

“You make me sound so much better than I am,” he says into her hair as he wraps her in a one-armed hug.

“Nah,” she says softly. “I make you sound exactly as great as you are. And one day maybe you’ll believe me.”

Clint holds her for a little while longer, taking comfort from the fact that she just lets him, before letting go and ruffling her hair. Natasha squawks indignantly, glaring at him while smoothing down her hair again.

“See if I ever say anything nice about you again now,” she says, punching him not-so-lightly on the arm.

“Yeah, yeah.” Clint grins at her. “You love me.”

She give him a once over, her eyebrow raised in an assessing manner, before curling her hand around his neck and dragging him down so she can kiss him.

“Yeah,” she says, no trace of joking in her voice. “I really do.”

As expected, Natasha picks a tree just in his line of vision and proceeds to read probably half of some novel Clint’s never heard of while he sinks arrow after arrow into his target. Her legs stretch out in front of her and her bare feet – she’d taken off her shoes almost as soon as she’d sat down – prove strangely distracting until Clint slips so far into the rhythm of draw-exhale-release that the world falls away.

What could Em be worried about? Clint has no idea. (Draw-exhale-release.) Is her job going badly? Again, he has no idea. (Draw-exhale-release.) He’s fairly sure she’d mention if it was though, she’s nothing if not vocal about the idiots at her gym. (Draw-exhale-release.) Are Billy and Teddy difficult to live with? (Draw-exhale-release.) Probably, but only because they seem physically incapable of being two feet away from each other without sucking face. (Draw-exhale-release.) She’s not applied to anything super fancy that he’s aware of. (Draw-exhale-release.) Nor has she yet, to his knowledge, set in motion her dream of opening her own gym. (Draw-exhale-release.) She and Kate are going strong, and Kate hasn’t mentioned anything to him to that might indicate otherwise. (Draw-exhale-release.) So what could it be?

(Draw-exhale-release.)

(Draw-exhale-release.)

“Hey, Clint.”

(Draw-exhale-release.)

“ _Clint_.”

Natasha’s voice pushes through the heavy silence in his mind.

“Huh?”

“I think you’re going to ruin your target.”

Clint looks over to his target, registering for the first time that if he shoots for much longer he’s going to start hitting arrows already embedded in the target and, regardless of what they show you on TV, that’s neither easy nor particularly clever. Arrows are tough and they don’t break easily; you’re likely to hurt someone unless you’ve primed your shafts to split beforehand.

“Oh.”

Natasha smiles and nods at someone behind him; he turns to find a little girl, barely pushing six, staring at him like he holds the sun.

“You’re really good, mister,” she says shyly, clutching her bow to her chest.

Clint glances towards the target, then across to Natasha, then back down at the little girl, completely at a loss as to what to say.

“I practice a lot,” he says eventually and the girl nods solemnly before declaring, “When I grow up I am going to go to the Olympics and win a gold medal and get a pony.”

Clint fights very hard not to laugh at that.

“I’m sure you will,” he says, fighting a smile as her instructor finally notices she’s wandered off and rushes over. “But you gotta practice, alright?”

The little girl nods again before being herded away.

Man, if only he had that level of self-confidence. He’d say it was a kid thing, but even at six he was nervy and self-doubting. He scrubs his hand over his head, watching as the little girl lines up her shot. Draw-exhale-release. Her arrow lands just shy of the outer edge of the blue ring.

He looks back at his target, his arrows clustered together within the yellow inner ring. Maybe he’ll move the target back another ten feet and start again. He always chooses this end space so he doesn’t have to worry about being shot when he decides to move the targets while others are still shooting. A smart idea, as when he gets into the zone, whether people are still shooting is the last thing he’s thinking about.

He leans his bow against Natasha’s tree and signs  _You okay to stay longer?_

She gives a nod in the affirmative and he goes to pull out his arrows from his target, sticking them into the earth by his feet so he can drag the target back another ten feet.

He hasn’t worked out what might be bothering Em but, as he starts shooting again – draw-exhale-release – he decides he’ll ask her tonight. If a six-year-old can believe she can get into the Olympics, Clint sure as hell can help out a friend.

 

Clint explains his half formed plan to Natasha on the way back from the range. They’d stayed much longer than he had initially planned and it’s well past dinner time already. Normally he and Natasha would be eating together, either at hers or at his, but Natasha has plans with Yelena for tonight, so instead she simply wishes him good luck, pressing a kiss to his cheek before turning towards her place.

“You’ll be fine!” she calls, just before turning the corner. “Don’t worry!”

But when he gets home neither Em nor Kate are there and they remain stubbornly not-there the entire evening. He’s not too sure what their plan was for the day, but he knows Kate’s got exams coming up and Em starts her Mondays early with a boxing class at 7.30am, for all those nine-to-fivers who _literally_ want to beat the Monday Blues into submission.

Clint waits until close to 1am but eventually has to turn in to ensure that he’s awake enough for a full day in the library studying for his finals. However, sleep eludes him, low-level worry gnawing at the pit of his stomach, and he’s still awake at half three when he hears the door open and Kate’s slightly slurred voice trying to be quiet and only halfway succeeding. They must’ve gone out or something. Standard Kate Bishop revision process; Em is such an enabler.

He lies in bed and listens to them shuffle around the house before Kate’s door clicks shut with a quiet _snick_ and silence folds over the house again.

It’s a little unlike Em to do that though. She and Kate are well balanced in many ways, but Em is definitely the more practical of the two. She’s good at keeping routines and takes her job very seriously. Clint’s worry doubles in an instant. If Em is worried enough for her to go out on a Sunday night when she has work the next day, whatever it is must be really, _really_ bothering her. And with Kate edging into her manic revision mode, it’d be pretty easy for her to miss things like Em being wildly off-script.

Clint’s mind zips through about a hundred different scenarios that get progressively more ridiculous the longer he’s awake. _No_ Clint, Em does not have cancer, or AIDS, or even cancer-AIDS. That’s not a thing. _Go to sleep_.

But he can’t and eventually, sometime around four in the morning, he gets up and shuffles into the kitchen, ostensibly for a glass of water but mostly just in the vague hope that the change in scenery will help his brain  _shut the fuck up_  for a moment.

Em is sitting at the kitchen table, staring into the middle distance looking the closest to crying Clint has ever seen her. It mostly just means she looks angry-sad, but it’s still alarming, and for one whole second Clint debates just turning around and leaving before sternly telling himself to grow a pair.

“Hey,” he says and he hopes his voice isn’t too loud or anything. He has trouble telling when he’s not wearing his aids.

Em jerks and her gaze snaps up to his.

“What’re you doing up?” he asks carefully, internally berating himself for not trying to work out how to broach this subject, despite spending hours worrying about it.

Em shrugs and says something, but it’s too soft for him to catch and it’s too dark for him to lip-read.

“Sorry,” he says quietly, waving vaguely at his ears as he moves to sit in front of her at the table. “Not got my ears in.”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Em says louder, a defeated slump to her shoulders.

She used to over-enunciate, exaggerating her mouth movements when he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids, which just makes lip-reading even more difficult. He’s glad she’s stopped, even if it means right now he’s slightly worried Kate might wake up and hear them.

“Join the club,” Clint says, automatically signing as he speaks. Em glances at his hands, fingers moving as if to imitate him, before she sighs and runs her hands through her hair.

“I guess I should really learn that,” she says eventually, after staring at the table for a moment.

Clint shrugs. “You don’t have to. I’ll probably learn Russian before I learn Spanish so…”

Em smiles vaguely but doesn’t reply, instead resuming staring at the table. Clint lets the silence stretch for a while, but when it’s clear she’s not going to say anything more he slumps forward, resting his head on his folded arms and gently kicking her ankle under the table.

“Hey,” he says quietly, “what’s up?”

She smiles and shakes her head, but her eyes are bright with tears.

“No, really.”

Em snorts at that. Well, whatever. She already knows that he’s crap at this kind of thing. This is her punishment for making him worry about her.

“It’s stupid,” she says – or he thinks she says; she’s speaking low again and her hand keeps obscuring her mouth.

“If it’s worrying you this much,” Clint replies, taking a punt on what she said and employing Natasha’s well-used response to that sort of statement, “it’s not stupid.”

Em gives him a withering glare but he’s far too tired for it to have any effect, so he just stares impassively back. Just because he’s bad at this doesn’t mean he’s going to give up. That being said, he also doesn’t really know where to go from here, so he just keeps looking at her, as if he can stare her into submission. It’s never worked before, but Clint’s nothing if not stubborn.

Em leans back and folds her arms, avoiding eye contact and instead glaring at the fridge, the window, anything that isn’t Clint. She manages to continue in this manner for a good long while, and Clint can feel tiredness creeping up his spine. Because obviously slumping against the kitchen table is the right place to go to sleep.  _Obviously_.

He’s about to give up and try talking again, or maybe just go to bed, when Em shifts and speaks.

“What?” Clint says, internally cursing his dad and his free fists because this would be so much easier if he could  _hear_.

“New York Pride,” Em repeats, only just loud enough for him to catch, “attracts nearly a million people.”

Clint frowns and sits up straighter.

“What?” he says again, because really?

“And, like, statistically speaking, fifty percent will be women and…” she waves her hand vaguely, “New York has a massive population and is home to lots of interesting NGO HQs and other international organisations and I’m – ”

She cuts herself off, looking angry and upset and Clint just stares at her because  _nothing is making sense right now_.

“I wanna –  _¡Dios!_ ” she sounds miserable, and Clint is still completely at a loss. “I wanna open a gym and she – ” she cuts herself off again, looking away while clearly biting her cheek. Her eyes are bright again.

‘She’?

Clint stares at her, his mind going a mile a minute as he tries to sort over everything Em’s saying into something that makes sense.

“Oh shit _._ ” Clint’s eyes widen as he works it out. “No, no, no. She’s not – _Em_ – ”

He all but scrambles around the table, dropping into the chair beside Em and wrapping his arms around her, quietly glad he wore a t-shit to bed because he’s sure Em wouldn’t appreciate the alternative.

“You are so fucking epic, okay?” he mumbles into her hair. “And just ‘cause Katie might go to New York doesn’t mean she’s going to – to  _leave_  you. She loves you.”

It’s awkward, how they’re sitting; Em facing straight ahead and Clint hugging her sideways, her shoulder pushing into his chest. She doesn’t hug back, doesn’t turn into him or react in any way, but he can feel her breath hitching almost imperceptibly.

“She loves you _so fucking much_.”

“She’s so much better than me though,” Em all but chokes out, so softly that the only way Clint catches the words is because her mouth is right next to his ear.

“At what, exactly?” Clint asks, rubbing his hand up and down her arm. “Punching? You’re better at punching. You tell better jokes; Katie’s are terrible. You’re better at cooking – ”

Em snorts; everyone is better at cooking than Kate.

“ – and boxing and sassing people. So what exactly is she better at? Studying? Katie’s crap at studying. She’s good at bullshitting and retaining information. Archery?” Clint pauses because that, at least, is a stupid question. “Okay yes, she’s better at archery, your aim is shit. She’s rich, I guess, and she’s got a head for politics and economics, which is baffling, but that’s not _better_ that’s just _different_. She’s not fucking _better than you_ , America Chavez.”

Em twists in his arms so she can glare at him.

“Okay.” Clint throws his hands up in defeat. “I lied. Kate Bishop is amazing. She’s a fucking perfect asshole, but she _chose us_. Out of all the dirtbag kids in our school she chose me, for some obscure fucking reason, and stuck by me like the loyal stubborn bastard that she is. And I’m a tragic mess but _you_ , you’re brilliant and she chose _you,_ Em.”

Clint curls his hand around her shoulder and gives her a little shake. “She chose you, and after your first date she barrelled into the house and practically _octopus hugged_ me and said ‘She’s perfect, Clint. She’s perfect and so much better than me and I think I’m in love’.”

Em’s expression is almost blank with shock, like she’s never heard that before; like Kate doesn’t spend half her time telling her to her face that she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

“And like I said; Katie’s a loyal, stubborn asshole. Half a million hot New York lesbians aren’t going to mean shit to her when there’s you.”

Em stares at him for a little while longer, her eyes getting brighter and brighter until he can see the tears that aren’t quite heavy enough to fall. She lets out a long, shuddering breath and covers her face with her hands. He can see her mouth move, but it’s too fast and he’s fairly sure she’s mumbling in Spanish anyway, so he just waits her out, briefly debating whether to put a comforting hand on her thigh before realising she’s wearing pretty short shorts and resting a palm between her shoulder blades instead.

It’s weird, doing this for someone else. He’s usually in Em’s position in these kinds of situations rather than being the guy people come to. He’s kind of flattered that Em trusts him enough to be this vulnerable in his presence. But then he thinks of what Em had said when she’d forced him to confess the whole thing about Bruce and studying abroad; people think of her more as Kate’s girlfriend than Clint’s friend. But they _are_ friends. Em’s probably one of his closest friends, which is weird considering how long it usually takes him to feel comfortable around people.

Em says something, something he’s fairly sure was English and meant for him, but he misses it completely, pulling an enquiring face at her in return.

He has no intention of being hearing-aid-less in front of Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes any time soon, for instance.

“This never happened, okay?” she repeats.

“What never – ?” he starts, but is cut off by Em wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder, breath hot and fast against his skin. Their knees knock together, his back almost instantly starts hurting, and Em’s fingers are digging into his skin _hard_ but he can put up with all of it if it makes her feel a little steadier.

Eventually she pulls away, rubbing under her eyes and avoiding his gaze.

“I – ”

She smiles tentatively before standing.

“I’m gonna… Go back…”

“Hey, sure.” Clint waves her away with a smile, trying to act like the sudden change of pace isn’t throwing him slightly. “And don’t worry Em, you’ll be fine.”

She turns at the door, the expression on her face caught somewhere between shame and gratitude, and he hopes she isn’t going to say something important because she’s too far out of the pool of light cast by the counter lights for him to reliably read her lips. But instead she hesitates and then lifts her hand up, palm in, touching her chin with her fingertips before bringing it down again in a deliberate, lever-like motion.

 _Thank you_.

 

Clint’s exams pass in a blur, the kind of blur that only happens when the worry of exams is compounded by the fact that you know the worry won’t end once the exams are over. Which is then made worse – for an odd definition of worse – when Natasha drops the fucking bomb that she’s signed on to stay with Culver’s Language Department for another year despite the fact that a rather prominent publisher has offered her a position in New York. And then, _and then_ , when he’d done the _fucking obvious_ and pointed out that that was a _really stupid thing to do_ , Natasha had replied with a very level, “But you won’t be in New York, Clint,” which sure as hell had shut him up.

Clint wonders, when he’s not thinking about medical procedures and how not to fail his exams, why it is that Kate feels she can leave Em here but Natasha doesn’t want to do the same. But voicing those questions to Natasha would involve him having to explain _why_ Em has been worried, and he refuses to do that without Em saying he’s allowed to first. So he just stews and stews until, completely out of the blue, Natasha voices the opinion that if Kate gets this internship she gives Em six months minimum before she moves out to New York too.

And he _can’t_ do that, so that sort of answers that question.

Clint’s exams finish one week before he’s due to fly to London, and he spends that week alternating between flat out denial and a sort of manic-obsessive organising that everyone gets tired of very quickly. He’s almost so blinkered that he misses the fact that Kate is doing something similar, but Natasha can be slightly merciless when it comes to making him face stuff she thinks he needs to know. So when Kate suggests a party the night before he flies, he’s aware enough to know that turning down the idea based on the fact that it’s _fucking terrible_ is not useful, so he simply agrees.

People start turning up at six, which Clint wasn’t expecting. But apparently Kate’s invitations had been pretty specific; _turn up around six, leave before two. Anyone left over gets thrown out of the house and you better believe Em can throw you out of the house._ Kate had also invited everyone, including Yelena and Thor and Jane, who drop by for about an hour to grin at Clint like the proud parents they’re not.

There’s alcohol by the gallon, which neither he nor Kate drink. Kate because she’s driving them to DC tomorrow and Clint because, despite all the good humour and familiar faces, he doesn’t feel steady enough to guarantee he won’t do something stupid. Plus today, the smell of whiskey makes him want to throw up. Bucky actually gets his Jack Daniels confiscated by Kate because of it.

But eventually the good cheer and genuine good will from all his friends makes him relax and they end up playing the kinds of party games and telling the kinds of stories that only really drunk people think are a good idea. It’s just a shame Clint’s not drunk.

“Okay! How old were you when you first had sex?”

Bucky’s eyes are manic-bright and his finger is none too steady when he points it… straight at Clint.

“Jesus Christ Barnes, the fuck?”

“Come _on_ ,” Bucky whines, elongating the ‘o’ enough to sound like he’s about five. “It’s either this or spin the bottle.”

Clint looks around the room and makes a decision he’s probably going to regret.

“I’d rather spin the bottle.”

“Which means this story is _good_.” Bucky is a belligerent asshole when he’s drunk. “Spill.”

Clint debates just getting up and leaving. Not really because he’s ashamed or anything, rather that this just treads to close to other really dumb shit he did when he was younger that he doesn’t really want to think about right now. But his appealing look over to Kate just gets him her patented _you brought this upon yourself_ look and Natasha just looks _interested_ so he just sighs and says, “Thirteen.”

Bucky fucking _crows_ and throws his hands in the air, but then realises halfway through that that wasn’t really what he expected and immediately follows it up with a slightly-too-loud, “Wait, what?” just as Steve laughs and says, “Ha, Buck, he’s got you beat.”

“Thirteen?” Bucky repeats.

“Yeah, I was a fucked up kid.”

“But who the hell sleeps with thirteen year olds?”

“Other fucked up thirteen year olds,” Clint says, before grabbing a discarded wine bottle and saying, “This is totally for you,” and spinning it.

It lands on Steve and Clint cackles.

And so the evening devolves into a rather ridiculous game of spin the bottle, which everyone agrees they’re too old for, really, but join in with anyway. There’s much squabbling, and no one has to kiss anyone they don’t want to, but Clint still ends up kissing – in order – Natasha (they get pulled apart), Bucky (surprisingly good), Yelena (very good), Natasha again (fuck yes), Billy (way too eager), Anya (sweet but weird), Bucky again (even better second time), David (awkward), and Natasha again (that may have been fixed. By him.)

He passes on Kate (God no) and Em passes on him (thank Christ) but he and Kate enjoy the ridiculously hot sight of Natasha and Em kissing, and Yelena and Bucky suck face in a way that means they’re definitely going to be fucking sometime in the next two hours.

And then Clint gets Steve, and holy fuck is he a good kisser, and they only really stop because Clint unconsciously tries to climb into his lap and loses his balance. And that’s a whole new thing that Clint didn’t know about himself, holy fuck.

There’s a short, stunned silence where they both sort of just stare at each other blankly and then Bucky whoops and starts laughing and Clint turns to find Natasha staring at him, her gaze so hot and hungry he’s not really sure what to do with it.

Then she raises her hands and signs, very deliberately, _I am going to masturbate to that forever_ and Clint blushes so hard he thinks he’s going to damage something.

And Kate, _fucking obviously_ , notices and immediately yells, “Two o’clock, everyone out!” and thank Christ it’s close enough to two to make it a valid statement, because Clint’s jeans are way too tight and Natasha looks very close to slamming him against the first available wall. He barely registers Kate telling him that she and Em will be staying at Em’s and they’ll come by at seven to pick them up, before the door slams closed and Natasha’s on him immediately.

“Holy shit,” Natasha breathes out between kisses. “ _Holy_ _shit_.”

She’s pulling off her jeans and her top, tugging on his belt and leaving a trail of clothes through the house as she all but drags him to his room.

“You need to get naked right the fuck now,” she says, her tone brooking no argument as she yanks off his jeans, catching his skin with her nails. He hisses but the sound is swallowed by her lips as she fuses their mouths together and he is _so fucking hard_ , oh my god.

“Jesus, Tash,” he manages as she breaks away from him long enough to settle in his lap. “Slow _down_.”

“I have spent the entire evening watching you flirt with fucking _everyone_ ,” she all but growls. “And then you _kissed Steve Rogers._ Don’t ask me to slow down.”

“I wasn’t flirting,” he mutters into her mouth, “And I didn’t know kissing Steve was a thing for you.”

“I have _eyes_ , cолнышко,” she replies, though she does slow down, though probably only to torture him. “And when you’re happy you flirt like breathing.”

 _Irony_ , Clint thinks as she starts to roll her hips in a way that’s definitely designed to make him lose his mind, because he’s having trouble breathing now. And then Natasha shifts ever so slightly and the ridge of Clint’s cock slides between her folds and it’s _wet_ and _warm_ and _oh god_ he’s going to die.

“Also, stop _talking_.”

Clint _can’t_ say anything to that, too busy trying not to come too early and ruin everything, and Natasha seems to have better things to do as she begins kissing and licking his neck and chest. His hands find her ass, alternating between groping and pressing her more firmly against him, the friction delicious, before attempting to slide between their bodies to find her clit. Natasha’s nails dig into his shoulders and Clint takes this as encouragement until Natasha growls and grabs his wrists.

“No,” she says, low and gravelly.

Clint whines low in his throat and tries to touch her again but her hands tighten almost to the point of pain as she forces his arms up and away until he can feel the wood of the headboard under his hands.

“Hold on,” she commands. “Don’t move until I say.”

Clint whines again but grabs on and holds _tight_ , like he’d fly into a million pieces if he didn’t. Because that’s sure as hell how he feels; hot and tight and too big for his skin, Natasha lighting him up to the point where he’s sure he’s going to catch fire and burn away.

Natasha sits up, a vision of sweat-slick skin and peaked nipples, causing the incessant pressure on his dick to lessening to just below mind-blowing.

“Мой чертовски красивый мальчик,” she says, breathless and flushed, staring at him like she wants to eat him alive. “Look at you.” She traces her fingers down his chest, sending goosebumps skittering across his skin. “You’d do whatever I say right now, wouldn’t you?”

Clint nods, because right now – yeah, he totally would.

With what looks like monumental effort Natasha climbs off him and briefly he sees the hot red of her cunt in amongst reddish curls. He groans at the sight, saliva pooling in his mouth. He wants to bury his face between her legs. He wants to eat her out until all he can taste and see and smell is her. Until she’s as much of a mess as he is.

He doesn’t let go of the headboard though.

Natasha only goes as far as the drawer on his bedside table, rummaging through until she finds a condom in amongst the dead batteries and paperclips. For a moment, she just stands beside the bed, looking down at him, and Clint feels like he’s going to burst out of his skin with want. She makes sure he’s looking at her as she sucks two fingers into her mouth, hollowing her cheeks obscenely before pulling them out with a soft ‘pop’ and circling her nipples.

Clint makes a gut-punch sound and he swears he can _feel_ his pupils dilate. Natasha’s eyes are liquid dark and she smirks, not moving until Clint forces out a low, “please” because he can’t stand it anymore.

“I’ve got you, cолнышко” she says softly before licking a stripe up his dick, probably just to watch him lose his fucking mind because _Jesus fucking Christ._

“ _Oh my God_ ,” he pants as Natasha grins up at him. “You’re – ”

But Clint doesn’t get much further because, as if the horribly languid pace she’s been setting has finally got to her too, Natasha shakily rolls a condom onto his dick, swings a leg over his thighs and sinks down _oh so slowly,_ her entire posture seemingly shattered open.

“ _Clint_ ,” she moans and Jesus, he’s never thought his name sounded particularly great until he heard it moaned by Natasha Romanov while being fucked through the mattress. “Oh God, _oh god_ – ”

She trails off into quiet gasps and hoarsely muttered Russian, and Clint plants his feet more firmly on the mattress so he can counterpoint her thrusts as she rolls her hips down to meet his. He hasn’t let go of the headboard yet; his arms ache and his fingers are cramping to the point where he can no longer feel, but Natasha is coming apart above him, her orgasm washing over her and making her mouth slack and her body grip him so hard that she sets him off, too; vision greying at the edges as he comes so hard it’s like he’s falling into her.

It takes a while for him to get his bearings, and he’s only vaguely aware of the fact that Natasha is gently unclenching his hands from the headboard and pressing kisses to his fingertips. She lifts off him just enough to remove and tie off the condom before wrapping herself around him, sweaty skin sliding slick smooth.

“I think you killed me,” Clint says hoarsely.

“По-моему я в раю,” Natasha replies quietly and he doesn’t ask what she actually said because he has a feeling he knows the basics regardless.

They lie together for a while – Natasha gently scratching her nails through his admittedly sparse chest hair, Clint watching her eyelashes flutter against her cheek – until Clint decides he’s steady enough to return the favour; to attempt to pass on that incredible wild _need_ that Natasha had coursing through his veins.

So he starts kissing across her collarbones and her chest; sucking bruises to the tops of her breasts, the ribs directly beneath her breasts, at the join of her neck and jaw. And every time she moves to hold his shoulders, or run her hands through his hair, he gently removes them and places them back on the sheets. Until she’s done it one too many times and he lifts his eyes to her lust-blown gaze.

“Are you going to be good,” he says, low, “or am I going to have get _you_ to hold the headboard?”

In answer Natasha attempts to drag him up to her mouth, so he takes both her wrists in one hand and reaches up to the shelf that runs above his bed, blindly searching for the old black and grey striped tie he knows is mixed in with the crap up there. Natasha moves with him, core muscles working hard to get her close enough to him to brush a kiss along his ribs despite the lack of leverage and the movement almost has Clint caving – briefly believing that her hands on him would be better than seeing her so strung out she can’t speak – but he rallies and gently pushes her down again, looping the tie first around her wrists and then around the headboard.

“You’re terrible at following orders,” he says into her mouth.

“So give me some worth following.”

She always talks about his blush and how obvious it is, but currently he can see red staining almost to her navel and he wants to chase it with his tongue.

“Close your eyes,” he whispers, fulling expecting her to ignore him, but she surprises him by complying and he rewards her with a long kiss before moving away to suck bruises on the inside of her arm.

Clint takes his time, licking and sucking every inch he can reach while returning to her mouth when he can’t take her begging anymore. And oh god does she beg; incomprehensible Russian and filthy English and broken moans that slip down his spine to pool at his groin. He’s not ready to go again yet, but _fuck_ if he’s not getting there.

He continues for as long as he can stand it, sucking bruises to her thighs and hip bones and any other patch of skin that might make her writhe and moan. She could probably get out of her bindings – they’re not that tight, he checked – but instead she just pulls at them, arms straining and back arching. He can _smell_ her and, when he can’t take it anymore, when he’s shaking and feels as unsteady as Natasha looks, he licks a long stripe against her cunt and takes immense pride in the way Natasha practically screams, arching and pulling so hard on her bindings that he hears the headboard creak.

 _“Выеби меня_ ,” she grinds out. “Oh fuck. Господи Исусе, давай ну же. _Please_.”

Clint has no idea what she’s saying – he’s not sure _she_ does; if she’s aware of much more than the slick slide of skin on skin because he knows he isn’t – but context clues mean he can guess what she’s asking – demanding really – and he’s more than willing to comply. He gives her a few more playful bites along her hip bones before finally giving in and eating her out like he’s starving for it, drinking in her cries and curses and revelling in the pull of her hands in his hair.

Her feels her come around his tongue but he keeps going, wanting to wring out at least one more, just to hear the pants and whines she makes when it becomes almost too much, but he makes the mistake of sitting up briefly to kiss her full on the mouth and Natasha immediately wraps her legs around his waist, strong and tight and reeling him in so his cock nudges against her entrance. He groans at the sensation of her slickness against his cockhead while she fucking _keens_ , urging him forward with her heels and her broken-record words, and Clint only has so much will-power in the face of all this fanned-fire lust. He can eat her out through multiple orgasms later; right now this is more important.

It’s only when he’s slowly easing in that the realisation makes its way into his desire-fogged mind that he’s not wearing a condom, that this is stupid and reckless and _they haven’t talked about this_.

“Condom,” he grinds out, stilling with Herculean effort. He knows she’s on the pill but that’s not the same.

“Мне наплевать!” comes the rushed reply, and he doesn’t know what that means, has _no idea_.

“Tash,” he gasps, because she’s still trying to pull him closer. “English – you gotta – ”

“ _I don’t care_ ,” she all but snarls, wrestling one hand free of the tie to position him back at her entrance. Then Natasha tightens her heels, gasping as Clint slides home, and it feels like his first kiss and the Fourth of July and every dirty fantasy he’s ever hand rolled into one; hot and close and real and _perfect_.

Clint thrusts once, twice, and comes apart at the seams as Natasha shakes in his arms.

 

Clint drags himself out of bed the next morning to the sound of his godawful alarm, foregoing Natasha’s embrace for the certain knowledge that he has to be at the airport by one at the latest and if he doesn’t get up _now_ Kate will just barge in to make him. Which would be fine apart from Natasha is watching him from beneath the covers, smug smile firmly in place and with bruises _everywhere_.

Kate isn’t allowed to see that, that’s _Clint’s._

“I look like I’ve contracted some terrible disease.”

Natasha’s voice is rough, sending shivers down his spine, and he looks over at where she’s lounging – actually _lounging_ – in his bed. There are bruises on her collarbones, up her neck and around her breasts. There’s a bruise on the inside of her arm. There are probably bruises on the insides of her thighs. The sight – the _idea_ – makes Clint feel a little like an animal and a lot like he’d like to do it again.

Instead he shoves his phone charger into his bag and triple checks his passport. It’s probably a good thing that Natasha is so distracting else he’d probably be _freaking the fuck out._

“I’m going to miss you.”

Her voice is quiet, but not so quiet he’d miss what she said. For a brief moment Clint locks up, all muscles refusing to move, and then it’s gone.

“Don’t say that,” he says without turning.

“It’s true though,” Natasha replies.

It hits him full force then; that he’s leaving – not just Willowdale but the US, too – and he won’t see Natasha for two months, won’t see Em or Steve or Bucky, will be without Kate for the first time since he was six. ‘Cause sure, she’s been on holiday without him, but he could always call her without checking first. London is five hours ahead of Willowdale, seven ahead of New Mexico, they won’t _match up_.

He turns to face Natasha then, because if he doesn’t he’ll bottle it, say he can’t do this and run away to where it’s safe. He needs Natasha’s conviction.

She doesn’t let him down.

Natasha catches his hand and pulls him towards her, winds her free hand into his hair and kisses him soundly and says, “You’re going to be so great,” in a way that implies she’s daring the world to try and prove her wrong just so she can beat it.

They stay awkwardly crouched for a moment, forehead to forehead, just breathing each other in, before Natasha gives him another quick kiss and tells him to shower because he’s all smelly and gross. “I’ll strip the bed and get coffee started. Be quick.”

Kate arrives to pick them up in her tiny purple Beetle just as Natasha is coming out of the shower and drives them to DC on less hours of sleep than is sensible and no one points out there were better ways to do this. If they _had_ been sensible, they’d’ve gone to DC the day before and stayed the night. But Kate had wanted the party and Kate had been willing to stay sober to drive and Kate had had a slightly manic proud-mother vibe going, so everyone just let her have her way.

Em is hungover as fuck and sleeps most of the way, tipped against the shotgun window, while Natasha curls around Clint in the backseat and cards a hand through his hair every time she feels him tense up too tight.

Kate smirks at them through the rearview.

Washington Dulles International Airport is familiar to Clint because he flies back to Des Moines with Kate every Christmas. But is feels different, going there to fly to the UK. Suddenly he notes how much it looks like Soviet Era statement architecture, how large and imposing it is. It brings what he’s doing home in a way he wasn’t expecting and he gives Natasha a wide-eyed, slightly panicked look. She squeezes his hand in return.

“You’re going to be fine,” she says, leaning over to press a kiss to his jaw. “You’re going to be _amazing_.”

Clint smiles at her. It’s unsteady, but it’s there.

He’d figured that Kate would drop him off at Departures and head straight back home, but instead she pays for two hours parking and rolls her eyes at his protestations.

“I’m not gonna see you for two months, I’m fucking well seeing you off properly.”

So they check his bags in and go for coffee, where Em brusquely shoves something at him ‘as a thank you’ and he suddenly finds himself in possession of _The London Cycling Guide_. Kate looks a little puzzled but Clint smiles and pulls Em into a tight hug, heedless of her squawk of indignation.

“You’re gonna be fine, Em,” he says into her hair.

“You too, chico,” she replies before forcing him to let her go. He grins at her and she pretends to scowl but she’s smiling too. _Christ_ , he’s so lucky to have these people.

Then Kate puts down her now-empty cup and holds his gaze for a moment. There’s pride there, and happiness and… and fucking _love,_ and he thinks she’s going to say something profound and important but instead she says, “It is time,” in her very best Rafiki voice and Clint busts out laughing because when has Kate _ever_ been profound and important where others can see her?

They walk him to Security. The International Departures section at Dulles is so much busier than the domestic area and it’s freaking Clint out a little, but Natasha walks close, her hand tucked into his, and that makes it easier.

“You’re gonna be brilliant,” Kate says when they reach the barriers. “I just know it.”

She gives him a hug, arms tight and fingers digging in, before punching him lightly on the arm. She’s then replaced by Em, who grins and hugs him again but doesn’t say anything. And then there’s Natasha, smiling wide and giving him the kind of kiss that will ensure that he’ll definitely miss her.

“I love you,” she says quietly.

She’s smiling up at him, honest and open and… proud.

“I love you, too,” he replies.

Her grin gets bigger and then, with Kate and Em, she pushes him towards Security barriers and waves him off.

He looks back as often as he can, between checking his passport and boarding pass and everything else, and as he rounds the corner and they slip out of sight his phone pings. It’s Kate. She’s sent a photo of the three of them, smiling with their heads together and their thumbs up, the Departures sign behind them.

Then his phone pings again. A text this time.

_[Proud of you Hawkeye]_


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint arrives in London.

To say getting off the plane in London is disorientating doesn’t quite convey how weird Clint finds the whole experience. It’s almost as if the air tastes different, brighter somehow, though he’s not sure if that’s because he wants a tangible difference or because it’s very obvious it’s just been raining.

Even if he hadn’t been warned that Heathrow was bigger than Washington Dulles, Clint thinks he’d have felt thoroughly overwhelmed; the sensation of  _new_  disorientating all on its own. There’re about four different passport queues, the baggage claim feels like a fucking aircraft hangar, and everything is so shiny and chrome that he feels like he’s fallen into a sci-fi novel. He keeps looking around for Kate, as if she’s going to pop up and point him in the right direction. But she doesn’t, obviously, so he hikes his bag further up his back, grabs his luggage, and follows the signs for Arrivals, so intent on not getting lost that he almost misses Jess waiting for him.

“Clint!”

He jerks around, only to be confronted by Jess’ grinning face over a printed out archery target with his name scrawled across it.

“Hey.” Clint smiles wide, incredibly glad he’d found her before he could start to freak out.

“It’s so great to see you!”

She doesn’t even let him come around the barrier, instead choosing to grab him into a hug over the railing, which digs into his hips.

“How was your flight? Here come this way.”

She gestures to the gap in the barrier and disappears into the scrum of waiting families before he can even answer her question.

“Okay? I guess?” he says as once they’ve found each other on the other side. “I didn’t die, so that’s good. Slept like shit though.”

“Sounds about right,” Jess agrees. “This way.”

They walk for what feels like ages, Jess providing relatively inconsequential chatter while Clint slowly wraps his head around the fact that he’s no longer in the US, until they reach a subway entrance adorned with a sign only familiar thanks to British TV.

“Tip one,” Jess says as they get onto the escalator. “This is the Tube, not the subway. Tip two,” she grabs his arm and gently moves him to the side so a harried looking guy in a suit can pass them. “Stand on the right, walk on the left. The entire commuting population of London will thank you.”

She waits for him to nod before proceeding to explain Oyster cards, the various Underground lines, and how the hell they’re navigating back to where Jess lives.

“We have to do it this way ‘cause mum needed the car today. Else I would have driven.” She steers him onto a waiting train. “It’s quicker. Or less annoying, at least.”

Outside of one time in Washington, Clint’s never used a subway before. Usually Kate drives him or he cycles. The rushing dark is weird for a moment, but soon they burst into watery sunlight and Clint can watch the countryside slide past.

Jess’ parents live somewhere in south London, so they end up plunging underground again eventually; changing at Piccadilly Circus – which makes Clint feel like the ultimate tourist in how excited it makes him – to end up at a station Jess just calls ‘Elephant’ where they change to a bus. Their house is part of an old-looking terrace backing onto a park and the street is tree-lined, quiet and, to be honest, nothing like Clint expected. Not that he’s entirely sure  _what_  he was expecting. Maybe to turn the corner and see St Paul’s or the Houses of Parliament, which obviously is dumb.

“We have the top two floors. The bottom two are a separate flat.” She gestures at a set of stairs leading down before opening the front door. “They look after the front garden, we look after the back. It’s supposed to be the other way round but Ted – Mr Downstairs – hates gardening and, well. We’re a house full of biologists.”

The door opens into a corridor that almost immediately becomes a set of stairs leading up.

“Where are you living now?” Clint asks, as he lugs his backpack up the stairs. He knows she’s not living here anymore but he hasn’t bothered yet to find out where she’s moved to. He has this sudden worry that it’ll be somewhere really far away and that’s been bothering him probably more than he’d want to admit, even to himself.

“Over the road,” Jess replies with a slightly put-upon air.

Clint gives her an incredulous look. “Really?”

“Really. Not this road, mind; other side of the Old Kent Road, but yeah. Couldn’t believe it when Faiza told me.” She leads him straight up another set of stairs, kicking off her shoes on the landing seemingly out of habit. “I was hoping for north London, or at least somewhere I wasn’t likely to bump into my mum in Tesco. C’mon. You can dump your stuff and then I’ll give you the grand tour.”

His room is on the very top floor, overlooking the park and what looks like a church but is apparently a mosque, and he has an en suite, which he’s incredibly grateful for. Apparently the room had originally been Jess’, the en suite her parent’s way of giving her a little more space, but when she’d moved to the States they’d made it into the guest bedroom. Clint doesn’t want to say, but this room is probably only a little smaller than the entire dump he grew up in.

“The actual bathroom is next door,” Jess tells him, “then the spare room. My parent’s room is at the front.”

The next floor down has roughly the same layout: dining room under ‘his’ bedroom, kitchen under the spare room/bathroom, and the front room under Jess’ parent’s room. The ceilings are higher than he’s used to and the dining room has these big windows that overlook the garden. He assumes that they’re a recent addition; they sure don’t look very Victorian.

They loiter in the front room for a moment, Clint looking out of the window and down at the street. He sees a red London bus drive past – the 63 to King’s Cross – and it hits him all over again that he’s in  _London_ , in the  _UK_ , and not in America anymore. It makes him feel cast adrift, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He wants to see everything, all those places he’s only ever seen on TV. But then, he also sort of wishes that he could just go straight to the hospital, so he can skip all the uncomfortable bits like meeting Jess’ parents and her friends. Mostly though, he wants to crawl into bed and sleep for a week, even though he knows he shouldn’t. Plus Natasha won’t be there and that hits harder right now that it would otherwise – the comfort of the familiar and all that. It also reminds him that he won’t see her for  _two months_.

Fuck, he misses her already. And Kate. And Em.  _God_.

“Here,” Jess says after a moment. “One last thing.”

She leads him into the dining room again, disappearing behind the door for a moment to wheel out a bike.

“It’s dad’s old one.”

For an ‘old’ bike, it sure looks good. Way better than his shitty bike, which only still functions thanks to tape and stubbornness.

“I can’t borrow this,” Clint protests.

“Well, yeah. I guess.” Jess shrugs like it doesn’t bother her, like this was the reaction she was expecting. “But then your other option is either paying for a bus pass or for a Boris Bike. This is free and dad’s not using it.”

She stares at him like she’s daring him to disagree and Clint can’t think of anything even approaching a coherent reason to not use it. Jess can tell too, because she wheels the bike over to him before letting it go so his options are either grabbing it or have it fall over.

“You’ll have to keep it either in here or in your room. We’re short of storage for this kind of stuff.”

Clint doesn’t really know what to say to that, to this generosity, and he’s getting to the point where he needs a couple of minutes to himself just to deal with it. He mumbles out a ‘thanks’, flicking the bike from first gear through to fifth and back again, just to have something to do with his hands, the change between being at home to being here is now feeling a little too sudden; he’s already almost been run over once because he forgot they all drive on the wrong side of the road here. It’s cooler and somehow fresher, and it smells wrong and is the wrong… _shape_.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s fine and the only reason everything feels one step to the left is because, for the first time in forever, everyone important in his life is an ocean away. A type of homesickness, linked more to people than to places.

And apparently he’s an open book, because Jess just shrugs and waves him away. “Go. Unpack and message Kate, and whatever else you need to do. I’ll make something to eat. Mum and dad’ll be back sometime around seven.”

“Do you want a hand?” Clint asks, more because he feels he should rather than out of any real desire to help out, but she just smiles slightly and says, “I can sort out pizza on my own, Clint. You’re good.”

He gives her a brief smile before wheeling the bike out of the room. Maybe he can take a quick nap. The bed in his room sure looked comfy.

“And don’t fall asleep!” Jess calls after him. “Else I’ll shove ice down your shirt!”

Okay then. No napping.

 

Clint doesn’t really feel up to anything after pizza, so Jess mostly just walks him around the area; shows him the local supermarkets and where to top up his Oyster card and how to work out the buses, before taking him into the park to stare up at the very blue sky. The grass has dried from the earlier rain – or maybe it just didn’t rain here – and it’s pretty quiet considering he’s basically in central London. He could fall asleep here. He probably will.

“I can take you to St Thomas’s if you want,” Jess says vaguely, and for a brief moment the name draws a blank in Clint’s mind before he remembers it’s the hospital he’s working at.

“Nah,” he replies. “If you make me move I might just kill you.”

They bought nectarines from the supermarket – Tesco’s – and she’s slowly working her way through the entire punnet. Not because Clint doesn’t want any, more just because he’s too tired to lift food to his face.

“Fair enough.”

Clint doesn’t really know how the next few days are going to go. He has to meet Jess’ parents tonight and he’ll start at the hospital on Monday, but past that the weekend is a blank. Jess mentioned something about meeting her friends and also something about going to the  _London_  parts of London, but if he’s honest, what he’d really like right now is a gym or an archery range. Not for the exercise aspect – he’s not lying about not wanting to move – but to help settle his nerves.

“Is there a gym nearby?” he asks after a moment, tiredness pulling at the words. Maybe he doesn’t need it after all; his brain is doing a good job of switching off all on its own. “Or a range?”

“I’ll show you later,” Jess mumbles around a nectarine stone. “Gym only, ranges are expensive. Don’t fall asleep.”

“Nn.”

There’s silence for a while and then, “Clint, _Clint_ , Clint!”

“What?” Clint mumbles, rubbing a hand over his face.

“I told you not to fall asleep.” Jess sounds annoyed, but the sun is too bright for Clint to bother opening his eyes. 

“Didn’t.”

“Sure, and it’s not half three either.”

Clint squints up at her. “What?”

“You’ve been asleep for half an hour,” she says, looking somewhere between annoyed and amused. “You’re lucky I noticed or you’d end up with the worst fucking jetlag ever.”

“I already have jetlag,” he points out, because he does. His head is pounding from lack of sleep and his limbs feel heavy.

“And you’ll have it worse if you fall asleep. C’mon.” She stands and brushes grass off her jeans before picking up the empty punnet of nectarines and kicking Clint gently in the thigh. “Faiza is on earlies so she should be home soon and Peggy said she was working from home today. I’ll take you to meet them.”

It sounds like about the last thing Clint wants to do, but if Jess isn’t going to let him sleep he’s not sure what else to do.

“Okay, fine,” he sighs, dragging himself upright.

“Sound more enthusiastic, why don’t you,” Jess snaps. “They’re only my friends.”

“Please,” Clint sighs, “ _please_ cut me some slack. I’m super fucking jetlagged, this is the first time I have ever left the Eastern Seaboard, everything sounds weird and smells weird and looks weird and I’m really fucking disorientated. Just…” He sighs again as he stands up. “This isn’t… normal for me.”

Jess frowns and looks away, but in that way that Clint knows to mean she’s not angry with him but rather with herself. “Sorry,” she says after a moment. “I’m just…” She trails off before taking a breath and starting again. “I’m just nervous, I guess.”

Now it’s Clint’s turn to frown. “Why?”

Jess gives him a patiently amused look as she heads towards the park exit. “Clint. You’re my ex and they’re my friends. They know what happened and they think I’m weird for letting you stay over.”

“Oh great, that makes me feel better,” Clint grouses, his stomach suddenly dropping. He doesn’t need to be judged by a load of British girls he’s never met before.

“Hey, they’ll get it when they meet you, okay? We were always better as friends.”

They cross the big main road and head down behind the Tesco where they’d bought their nectarines – all of which Jess ate. When Jess said she lived close by, she wasn’t kidding.

Jess’ building is a large, brutalist apartment complex with a crest saying ‘Corporation of London Housing’ stuck to the side. There’s no elevator and the stairwell smells faintly of garbage. Clint sort of thought London would be free of these kinds of things – the UK is supposed to be classier than America after all – but apparently not.

“Here we are,” Jess says, unlocking the door to number nineteen. “Home sweet home.”

The door opens onto a little entryway and directly in front is a bathroom and separate toilet. There’s also a small bedroom. “That one’s mine,” Jess says as she heads for the stairs. “Peggy’s from Oxford so she’s got more stuff than me. It only seemed fair for her to have a larger room seeing as half my stuff is still in the spare room back at my parents’ over the road.”

The stairs lead down instead of up and one floor below they pass another bedroom – “Faiza’s” – before passing through a doorway into a pretty large front room.

“Hey Pegs,” Jess says, greeting a woman who’s busy typing on a laptop on what looks like the dining room table. “This is Clint. Is Faiza home yet?”

‘Pegs’ introduces herself as: “Peggy Carter, pleased to meet you. And no, she’s not got in yet.” She’s an absolute knockout, curvier than Natasha with her hair in a sloppy bun and wearing a t-shirt that proclaims her to have been a volunteer at the 2012 London Olympics.

Jess wanders off to make some tea while Peggy gives him an assessing once over.

“Huh,” she says eventually.

“What?” Clint feels a little like a bug in a specimen jar.

“You’re not exactly what I pictured.”

“Sorry?”

Peggy quirks a smile. “Cute though.”

Clint blushes at that and Peggy looks just about to say something else when the front door slams and heavy footsteps come down the stairs.

“And that’ll be Faiza,” Peggy says instead.

“Some fucking prick,” Faiza says by way of introduction, as soon as she walks in the room, “told me to go home today, so my job could go to someone from _this fucking country._ ” Faiza is wearing jeans, a long sleeved t-shirt, a burgundy headscarf, and a scowl. “Like entitled fucking white guys are the only people born here.” She makes to take off her headscarf and is halfway through the motion before she actually notices Clint.

“Oh,” she says, her hands making an aborted motion to continue taking off the headscarf before slowly wrapping it back around her head. “Hi.”

“Hi,” says Clint, “I can… I dunno. Leave or something, if you want to take that off.”

He gestures to the headscarf, slightly uncomfortable. He’s not really sure what to do in this situation. The only other Muslim girl he knows is Kamala and she doesn’t wear a headscarf.

“No,” she says quickly. “I’ll just… be back in a sec.”

She disappears into her room, but not before Jess shouts, “Faiza! Rubicon?” to which Faiza replies, “Always!”

“Well,” Clint says to the room at large, “that was awkward.”

Peggy snorts out a laugh, but not meanly. “Nah, you did good. Brian always asks dumb questions.”

“Is Brian your boyfriend?” Clint asks, because he honestly has no idea and he’s not sure Jess has ever mentioned a Brian.

Both Jess and Peggy laugh at that, Jess coming out from the kitchen with tea just in time to hear him.

“He wishes,” Jess says. “Nah, he’s our friend Beth’s brother. He’s an idiot and we should stop hanging out with him. Sit, sit.” She ushers both Peggy and him towards the couches placed in an ‘L’ shape in front of the TV.

“Hey, that’s your fault.” Peggy turns to Clint. “Beth and Jess have been friends forever and that means Jess and Brian have been friends forever too, even though he’s a little shit who will try and get you into rugby as soon as you meet him.”

“Peggy says that like she’s judging, but Peggy is a huge rugby fan even though it’s a posh boy sport.”

“Rugby is not a posh boy sport!” Peggy exclaims.

“Also, calling rugby a posh boy sport is a great way to piss her off.”

“It is _not_ a posh boy sport, Drew.”

“Who brought up rugby?” Faiza asks as she comes back into the room, wearing much comfier looking clothes and a much looser, green headscarf.

“ _What_ is rugby?” Clint asks. He only has the vaguest idea – NFL without the padding? Something like that.

“Don’t – ” says Faiza warningly just as Peggy says, “Rugby is an _amazing sport_ – ”

“Which he’ll find out,” Jess says firmly, “when he meets Brian. He’ll be really pissed that you’ve stolen his thing, Pegs. And also I don’t want to listen to  _I might support England but Brian O’Driscoll is the best and you’ve got to love the All Blacks_  again. It gets boring after the fifty millionth time you hear it.”

Clint frowns, confused. “And Brian and Brian O’Driscoll are not the same Brian?”

“ _No_ ,” says Peggy emphatically. “Brian O’Driscoll is – ”

“A rugby player,” Jess says, “and seriously Pegs, stop.”

“Is this… a normal argument?” Clint asks Faiza, who’s watching with a slightly amused, slightly put-upon expression as Jess and Peggy continue to bicker.

“Unfortunately, yes. Spring is a very fraught time of year in this flat.” And when Clint gives her a confused look she elaborates with, “Spring is when the Six Nations is on, which is a big European rugby tournament. Pegs watches as many games as she can. Jess hates it.”

A memory niggles at the back of Clint’s mind. “She hates NFL too.”

“Too much testosterone, I think,” Faiza says, and Clint can’t argue with that.

“Too many rapists,” Jess cuts in flatly, and Clint can’t argue with that either.

Faiza shrugs. “Well, in any case,” she raises an eyebrow and puts on a much posher accent than her own, “it’s just not cricket, is it?”

Clint scrunches up his face. “That’s that weird fake-baseball that takes five days to play, right?”

“And Pakistan are amazing at it,” Faiza says with a grin. “But enough about sports, you’re going to be at St Thomas’ right?”

 

He and Jess head back to Jess’ parent’s place just before seven, Clint almost sleepwalking behind Jess. Peggy and Fiaza had been great – Peggy’s hilarious cutting remarks perfectly balancing Faiza’s enthusiasm about just about everything, rugby excluded. They’d even, somehow, managed to get onto the subject of museums, which caused Peggy to immediately offer to show him around the British Museum sometime in the coming week and Clint had agreed before he could decide it would be awkward. So he has a museum visit planned for the coming Saturday, which he’d be excited about apart from now the jetlag and strange unreality of the entire situation is conspiring against him and he just feels sort of foggy. And he hasn’t even met Jess’ parents yet.

That thought wakes him up a little.

“Mum’s pretty excited to meet you,” Jess says just as they turn onto her road, as if she can read his mind. What a terrifying thought.

Clint frowns at her profile. “Why?”

Jess shrugs. “She likes meeting my friends. I don’t know why. She was super excited when Carol and Monica came over a while back.”

Clint can’t think of anything to say to that. It’s not like  _his_  parents were ever particularly excited to meet his friends. Well, friend. Well, his mom was, on those few occasions Kate was around when his dad wasn’t. But Kate rarely came to his place. Clint knew even then that bringing someone to a house smelling almost exclusively of alcohol and fear wasn’t a great idea, plus he’d tried to keep Kate’s pitying looks to a minimum. She wasn’t as good at hiding them back then.

“So, you know,” Jess continues, pulling Clint back into the present, “brace yourself.”

Jess opens her front door and immediately a voice calls from the kitchen, “Jessica! Please tell me you’ve got milk!”

Jess, who had anticipated just this exchange and had dragged Clint into Tesco on the way back for this exact purpose, rolls her eyes at Clint. “Yes! And we have company!”

A woman who looks almost exactly like what Clint imagines Jess will look like in thirty years’ time, just shorter and less athletic, bustles out of the kitchen.

“Clint!” she cries, far more enthusiastically than Clint was expecting. She moves to shake his hand, realises that whatever she’s cooking is currently all over her hands, shrugs and envelopes him in a hug that he can say, with all certainty, is the most awkward of his life.

His arms are trapped by his sides and he can feel the heels of Jess’ mom’s hands pressing between his shoulder blades. He flails slightly. He has absolutely no range of movement by which to reciprocate and mostly just feels like a child’s toy, hanging awkwardly.

Jess is fucking smirking.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you!” Jess’ mom says once she’s let him go. “I hope your flight was alright.”

Clint stares at her blankly for maybe a second too long before his brain kicks in. “Yeah. Yes. It was fine. Thank you, Mrs Drew.”

She rolls her eyes in a very Jess-like show of exasperation. “None of that, it makes me feel ancient.” She gestures for them to follow her into the kitchen, taking the milk from Jess in the process. “Miriam, please. Or I’ll call you Mr Barton.”

Clint grimaces at the thought. “Fair enough.”

Miriam looks to be making a roast of some kind. It’s seems a little over the top to Clint, but Jess is thrilled to be getting something called ‘Yorkshires’, which Clint is told are some kind of batter pudding thing which are, “Absolutely amazing, Clint. Oh my God.” Miriam moves around the kitchen deftly directing Jess to stir and chop and baste while simultaneously keeping up a comforting stream of chatter punctuated by frequent repetitions of, “No, Clint. You’re the guest, sit back down.” It’s surprisingly comforting, Miriam apparently needing very little input from his end – though there’s something in her tone and body language that says that she realises that she’d made him feel uncomfortable beforehand and she’s trying to rectify it now.

Clint is tired, and the entire place smells of food and is comfortable and warm. He feels safe and relaxed and he’s slowly zoning out, so when the door slams and there’s heavy footfalls on the stairs and an unmistakably male voice calls out, “What’s for dinner, woman?” Clint’s rational brain doesn’t kick in quick enough and he tenses up so fast he  _hurts._

It’s a joke. He can hear it in the tone of voice. It’s a joke, it’s a joke, _it’s a joke_. But.

Clint’s dad used to say that and it was never a joke.

Jess turns at the sound of her dad’s voice and her eyes skip over Clint, widening slightly at what he knows is a wholly irrational look of fear on his face. Clint can see the brief moment of deliberation in her gaze before she goes over to her dad and gives him a hug in greeting, stalling him slightly as he comes in the kitchen door.

Clint breathes slowly and deliberately through his nose, staring unseeingly at the wood of the table. He’s not done something like that in  _years_ , but this entire room smells of food he didn’t have to make and he wasn’t facing the door and he’s off kilter, because he’s  _literally thousands of miles away from home_ , and Kate isn’t here to make him feel normal.

With a rush, he realises that this is the first time he’s been in a home with an adult man since he was eleven. (Kate’s house is not a home. Hell, he’s not sure Kate’s dad qualifies as an adult man.)

Clint presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Jesus,” he mumbles.

“Clint, are you alright?” Miriam asks, and he looks up to find her watching him with concern.

“Yeah,” he says, lying through his teeth. “Yes. Just tired.”

He can feel Jess looking at him, and he turns to see her standing at the end of the table next to her dad, who smiles politely and extends his hand. “Hello, Clint, I’m Jonathan.”

Clint stands to accept his handshake. “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

Jonathan Drew is tall – taller than Clint – and thin in a way Clint imagines would have got him called gangly when he was young.

He looks nothing like Clint’s own dad.

Jonathan smiles. “Please don’t call me ‘sir’. It makes me feel like I’m still teaching.”

Clint knows he can’t promise anything, not like with Jess’ mum – he called his own dad ‘sir’ after all and that shit is deeply ingrained for really fucking obvious reasons – but he smiles and nods nonetheless. Jonathan and Miriam then proceed to have what Clint imagines to be a very normal adult-family conversation about food and work and how Clint’s flight was, which is fine for about two seconds and then he has to make his excuses and escape to calm the fuck down.

He doesn’t feel comfortable using the front room or any other room in the house apart from ‘his’ bedroom, so that’s where he heads, dropping heavily onto the bed and mumbling _shit shit shit shit shit_ into his palms as he wills his heartrate to slow.

His hands itch for his phone; to call Kate, or even Natasha, and have them tell him he’s not being stupid, that it happens and he just has to roll with it, that it’ll get easier. All things he knows but needs someone else to tell him to believe.

He needs Kate to rant about how his dad was a shitbag. Because it’s true and he needs to hear it right now and the small part of him that still cares about his family has never let him do that himself, not in any meaningful way. Fucking _childhood_. Fucking stupid psychology. Fucking dad.

The knock at his door nearly makes him jump out of his skin.

“Hey, Clint.” Jess’ voice is soft and slightly hesitant. “Are you…? Can I come in?”

Clint takes a deep breath and scrubs his hands over his face before saying, “Yes.”

Jess doesn’t come in far, just far enough to close the door behind her.

“Are you alright?”

Stupid fucking question, Clint thinks. Of course he’s not. And that’s the problem with Jess, isn’t it? She always _asks_. Anyone else would just leave it, skip over the explanation part and go straight to the ‘make everything better’ bit. The part that usually includes insulting various family members enough that Clint remembers not to miss them, or at least remembers that they were terrible people.

Or most of them. Clint abruptly misses his mom so much it _hurts_.

Eventually Clint shrugs in answer and Jess tentatively edges into the room until she can sit down next to him at the end of the bed.

“I didn’t – ” she starts and then she cuts herself off, clearly unsure as to where that sentence was going. Instead she huffs out a breath, tucks her hand around his waist, and leans her cheek against his shoulder.

There’s silence for a moment, only punctuated by the sounds of kids and music coming from the park behind the house. It sounds like fun. Clint wishes he were outside there, in the sun, pissing around, rather than in here dealing with his _stupid fucking brain_.

“I’m sorry dad scared you,” Jess says softly after a while and Clint feels himself tense all over again.

He doesn’t _want_ to be scared any more, not of Jess’ dad, not of anyone. He wants all this bullshit to _fuck off_ until he feels like a normal human being that people don’t have to worry about. And he thought he was fine – he didn’t even think this would be a _problem_ past the standard fucking awkwardness of meeting an exes parents – but apparently fucking not.

“Not your fault,” Clint mumbles. “Not his either.”

“Not _yours_ either,” Jess replies, lifting her head so she can look at him properly.

Clint doesn’t say anything to that.

“What did I say?” Clint asks after a moment.

“Huh?”

“When I left. I don’t remember.”

There’s a weird blank between Jonathan coming into the kitchen and Clint ending up back in this room. He knows what happened intellectually, but he doesn’t actually remember a lot of it.

“That you needed the loo,” she says. “You were very polite. It was kind of scary.” Jess rubs a hand over his hipbone in a way that would be comforting if she were anyone but Jess, but as it is, just feels a little odd. He knows she’s only being nice though, so he lets it be. “Like,” she continues after a brief pause, “if I hadn’t seen your face, I wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong.”

She shifts again, pulling away with a brief squeeze to his shoulder.

“You’re a very good liar sometimes.”

They fall silent again. Someone in the park is playing Bob Marley very loudly – One Love – and in his head Clint hears that fireman from Family Guy; _Irony!_

“I have a thank you present somewhere,” Clint mumbles eventually. “For your folks.”

It’s his way of saying he’s ready to go back down again. He hopes Jess gets it.

“Okay,” she says after a moment. “Grab it. We can say you couldn’t remember where you’d packed it and it took a little while to find.”

At that, Clint finally meets her gaze. Jess looks sad in that way Kate looks sad sometimes. It briefly makes him want to punch things, but the feeling passes.

“Okay.”

Natasha had helped him pick something for a thank you gift. It was polite, she said, which he’d agreed with, but he’d still found the entire thing stressful. In the end he’d got a small gift basket of Virginia hams and other cured meats. It was nice, if a little more than he’d wanted to spend, and it looked like something you could only get in the States. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s a cured meat place just outside London and the Drews get all their meat from there and this is nothing special. He has no idea.

Jess smiles at him where she sees it though, so he figures it’s alright. He also digs out the Hershey’s Cookies and Cream chocolate he’d brought for Jess. In the end, she hadn’t asked for anything, but everyone likes Hershey’s Cookies and Cream.

Jess goes back into the kitchen first, probably as some sort of warning to her folks, and Clint takes a moment to make sure he’s steady enough to not freak out again before going in himself.

“Sorry about that,” he says awkwardly, when everyone turns as he enters. “Had to find…”

He shrugs and holds out the small box of hams.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” he says, as steady as he can manage, and something loosens in his chest when Miriam smiles.

 

When Clint goes upstairs to bed – way earlier than he’d ever want to admit to anyone and so full of roast beef and ‘Yorkshires’ he could pop – and digs through his still-unpacked bags for some pyjama pants, instead of sleepwear he finds a padded envelope with his name on the front in Kate’s handwriting. Inside is something like £240 in various denominations, including a bag of pound coins, and attached is a note that says, _please don’t yell at me_.

Clint stares at it for a while.

The biggest problem with being friends with Kate is that, like many people who grow up with it, she doesn’t understand money. Oh, she knows about money management, and currencies and saving and all that stuff, but she doesn’t understand _not having any_ and what that does to you once you start getting some. Clint doesn’t tell her ‘no money please’ because he doesn’t need money, he says it because it’s difficult to watch someone be so careless with something he needs _so much_. The fact that Kate can just _give him money_ if she wants to makes him uncomfortable, both because having ‘more than enough’ is a concept so foreign to him it’s like trying to read Cuneiform and because poverty is always something you’re taught to be ashamed of, and nothing makes him feel worse than not being able to pay for his own stuff.

But Kate doesn’t get this, because Kate has always had money, and only the rich can think about how money is a completely invented thing. The paper in his hand has no actual value past what people give it. But on the other hand, it has _so much value_ that people will, and do, kill for it.

What is worse, this is probably just some spare British pounds that was lying around the house in Des Moines that she picked up last Christmas. It’s something like $300 and it was just _lying around not being spent._

The other problem with being friends with Kate is that it’s not her fault. This is her helping, this is her wanting to help, and he can’t get angry at her for that.

Carefully, he tucks the envelope into the same pocket as his shiny new US passport. If he absolutely needs it, he’ll use it. Otherwise, Kate’s getting it back.

 

Jess also stays that night at her parents, which Clint is grateful for because if he’d come down the stairs in his sleep pants and t-shirt to find only Miriam and Jonathan milling around the kitchen like the embodiment of every Lifetime movie family ever – well, sort of; Lifetime can be  _unbelievably_  saccharine – he would have felt so incredibly awkward he’d probably just have spontaneously combusted or something. And he still feels awkward – underneath his regular feeling of  _morning why?_  – but at least Jess is there, wearing an oversized Culver University hoodie and arguing with her father about something far too academic for a Sunday morning. Or any morning, to be honest.

“Clint!” Miriam says as soon as she spots him. “What can I get you? Eggs? Bacon? Cereal?”

Clint stares at her blankly for a moment before Jess says, “Just coffee, mum. Clint needs at least two coffees in him before he regains the power of speech.”

Clint drops heavily into the nearest available kitchen chair and, not two minutes later, a mug of coffee floats into his view held out by Jonathan, who has a very understanding expression on his face.

“Thanks,” Clint mumbles, his voice scratchy.

It takes him another fifteen minutes – and another cup of  _really_ terrible coffee, though he guesses not everyone can have Kate’s fancy coffee machine – before he can answer Miriam’s questions about breakfast, though it’s a pretty easy in the end, the answers being  _yes, yes, more, thank you._

“Don’t expect this every morning,” Miriam says jokingly. “You’re not the only one who can’t function in the mornings. It’s a wonder any of us get to work on time.”

Clint half-squints at Jonathan. “You work at… UCL?” he says, uncertain.

He smiles and nods. “And Miriam is at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.”

“Both of which feel far too far away at seven in the morning,” Miriam chips in. “When are your shifts? I suppose there’s a good chance we’ll not see you in the mornings.”

Clint shrugs. “I have to turn up at Guy’s Campus at ten tomorrow for the college admin stuff and at the hospital at nine the day after, but that’s all I know for sure. Well, other than I won’t be doing the night shift and I’ll definitely get weekends off.”

“Well, that’s not too bad then. Plenty of time for sightseeing. Speaking of – what are your plans for the day?”

Clint looks at Jess. He has no idea what she has planned past the promise of finding the easiest way to get to the hospital he’s going to be working at. He’s  _hoping_  to visit some touristy places, if only because it means he won’t have to stay in this house longer than necessary, but he’d be equally happy to find a gym and beat the crap out of some punching bags.

Jess shrugs. “Find St Thomas’, work out the buses and cycle routes, and then… I dunno. You want to do anything?”

What Clint wants is to get out from under the kindly gaze of Jess’ parents, but he’s not going to  _say_  that.

He shrugs instead. “Explore, I guess.”

Jess gives him a calculating look, like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, before picking up her phone to do God knows what. Clint waits a moment, to see if his input is needed for anything else, but when it becomes clear that it’s not he mumbles something about showering and disappears back into his room.

He has a message from Kate via WhatsApp – a photo of her and Em practically asleep on the couch – and he feels a momentary flash of wrenching dislocation, but it passes just as soon as it arrives. He sends her a photo of the view out of his window before getting in the shower.

Half an hour later Clint heads back down to the kitchen feeling much more human than he had previously and with the realisation that his breakfast must have been waiting for him for a while because it’s almost midday. He feels a little bad about that; surely Jess’ parents have better things to be doing with their time than waiting around to feed the random American who’s invaded their home. But apparently not, because they’re still there when he comes back in; Jess tapping away on her phone, Jonathan reading the newspaper, and Miriam baking something. The domesticity of the entire scene knocks Clint for six and he stops in the doorway, feeling like an interloper.

“Oh hey,” Jess says, looking up, “you’re done. I have a proposal.”

Clint pulls an  _I’m listening_  face.

“The weather’s supposed to be good today and Beth really wants to meet you before she goes to work tomorrow, so she’s wondering if you’d be up for a picnic in Regent’s Park? She’s going to invite practically everyone though, just so you know.”

“What about St Thomas’? And Guy’s?” He still has to find out where both of these places are.

“Well, we can go to Guy’s now, if you want, and then we can walk to St Thomas’ along the South Bank and see some of the sights. And then either a bus back here or the Tube to Regent’s Park. Whatever you fancy.”  

It feels like a lot, but then, everything feels like a lot right now, and he can s _ee_ the disappointed face Kate will give him if he says he spent his entire time in the gym when he wasn’t at work. Plus he doesn’t really want to hang around the house if Miriam and Jonathan are going to be in all day. They’re friendly and all, but he’s not comfortable being around them in their own home. He’s sure it’ll get easier, but he’s definitely not there yet.

“I – yes?”

“You sure?” Jess asks.

“Who’ll be there?”

Jess thinks for a moment and then rattles off a list of names. Clint recognises Peggy, but that’s it.

“No Faiza?” Clint had liked Faiza, and if there was someone to talk hospitals with, at least there would be an automatic fall back in terms of conversation.

“Maybe. She has a family thing.” Jess pulls a face. “She almost always has a family thing to go to. Or a wedding.”

Clint remembers Kamala saying something like that; that she was sort of relieved to now live far enough away that she didn’t have to go to  _every_  function and  _every_  wedding. He’s fairly sure she’s flying back to Pakistan for her brother’s wedding – or something to do with her brother, because he maybe lives in Jersey City? Clint can’t quite remember – but she’s missed about four others which she’s pretty happy about. Pakistani family politics sounds _exhausting_ to Clint.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, more sure this time. Jess shoots him a quick smile before shooting off a message to someone – probably Beth – and ushering Clint from the kitchen. 

“C’mon,” she says as she puts her phone away, “let’s get adventuring.”

 

Slightly embarrassingly, Clint finds himself enthusiastically delighted by everything. He hasn’t got a British phone yet so he can’t Snapchat Kate every new thing, but he takes a ridiculous amount of photos anyway. He’ll send them to her later. The bus they take is a proper London bus, which gets about twelve photos, which he follows up by taking photos of everything from funny signs to London taxis. Kate’s getting _all of them_.

“This is so weird,” Clint says every two minutes and Jess grins.

It takes them longer than it should to get to where they’re going. Partly because Clint keeps stopping to look at things and partly because Guy’s Campus is so warren-like they wander around for at least twenty minutes before finding the building Clint needs for tomorrow. But it’s not time completely wasted; on the way they find several bike racks – London provides bike racks! – as well as at least two Starbucks. All very important discoveries.

The walk along the South Bank is even better. Clint feels like he’s stepped straight into a British TV show or something. They walk past some cool old ship and Shakespeare’s Globe and the Tate Modern art gallery. He sees St Paul’s Cathedral over on the other side of the river. He sees _the Thames_. They find a second hand book stall under Waterloo Bridge and dodge tourists constantly – apart from here Clint is also a tourist, taking photos of practically everything because he’s a dirt poor kid from Iowa. This was never supposed to be his life.

In the end what really gets him is the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, not because he cares overmuch about British politics or anything like that, but it’s a really famous building and it’s not like anyone in the US ever built anything quite so gothic and ostentatious – or at least, not ostentatious like _that_. It looks like some creepy villain’s palace from an early Disney movie; the ones that are trippy and weird, half because the animation style is old and half because the animators thought LSD was a really good idea.

He stares at it for a good long while before taking a selfie of him pointing at it in a _holy shit look guys_ sort of way. Jess gives him an indulgent look and then steals his phone and proceeds to film him going, “What the hell are you – no Jess give me that – fucking hell, Jess!” and then tripping over, because Clint is _smooth_.

Jess then manages to WhatsApp the video to herself before he can get the phone _back_ , and since Clint’s not got a UK phone yet that’s going to cost him more than he’d like. Plus he just _knows_ Kate’s going to see it before the end of the day. And then she’ll laugh at him, and then send it to everyone they know. Kate and Jess being friends is the worst.

 

They find Jess’ friends in a part of the Regent’s Park that looks like a set for a BBC period drama; all geometric flowerbeds and roses. They’re spread out lazily over several picnic blankets, surrounded by alcohol and snacks. They look slightly incongruous coupled with the _actual wedding shoot_ going on the other side of a big bed of roses.

As soon as they’re within earshot, a blond guy cries, “Ah! The ex!”

The blonde girl sat beside him punches him hard on the arm. “Shut _up_ , Brian,” she hisses. “God, can’t take you anywhere.”

So the blond guy is Brian and the blonde girl is Beth. Good to know. Clint’s also introduced to Leo – who he correctly identifies as Scottish on accent alone – his girlfriend Jemma, a guy with an incomprehensible accent called Joe, and Angi, a bubbly Italian and friend of Peggy, who kisses Clint on both cheeks in a display of European welcome that sort of weirds him out.

“She’s like that with everyone,” Peggy says conspiratorially, giving him an unexpected hug. “You get used to it.”

They’re a really nice group. Brian is just as loud and inappropriate as Clint had been told and he does indeed start telling him the myriad of reasons rugby is the ‘best sport ever’. But he’s tempered by Jemma and Leo, who seem to talk almost exclusively about science; Angi, who’s trying to become an actor; and Joe who… well, Clint’s not really sure what Joe says. He’s doesn’t understand ninety-nine per cent of the words coming out of his mouth.

“He’s Scouse,” Brian says helpfully, as if that’s supposed to clear everything up.

Joes laughs at his confusion and explains. He’s from Liverpool, the same city as the Beatles. He then goes off on a tangent about some recent soccer match and Beth cuts in with a comment about ‘your dumbfuck manager.’ He’s saved by Angi and Peggy, who draw him into an argument with Jemma about Star Trek instead.

It shouldn’t surprise him that Jess’ friends are nice, but somehow it does anyway. Or maybe it’s just that he’s surprised that they like  _him_. After all, these are all people who’ve known Jess for a while – probably people that Jess would mouth off to about her shitbag ex-boyfriend who slept with someone else while they were still together. And even if, once the anger had cooled and the facts were straightened out, she could go back and explain that maybe there was more misunderstanding there than previously thought, well. That doesn’t necessarily mean that these people would forgive him.

But they have. Or maybe they didn’t need to. Maybe he was too far away to be anything other than an abstract notion most of them never expected to meet, and now they have, it’s on good terms; everything water under the bridge.

It’s easy. It’s comfortable. And when Faiza turns up, straight from whatever function she’d been at, she snags one of the cokes Clint had earmarked as his own and he doesn’t even care. He gets about seventeen different invitations to be shown round various parts of London, renews his promise to Peggy to go to the British Museum with her and, by the time he and Jess head back to Jess’ parents place sometime after ten that evening, the sun turning the sky orange and the air still surprisingly warm, Clint feels a little more comfortable with the prospect of spending two months here.

 

The plan to visit the British Museum with Peggy sustains him through his first week in London, which is strange and exhausting in ways Clint hadn’t even anticipated. He has a crash course in British hospital procedure, given to him by his on-ward buddy and all-round good guy Abdul, but it still takes him three days to remember not to ask for insurance details – which Abdul mocks him for because he’s a terrible, terrible person. He also gets lost on the way to and from the hospital at least three times before he works out the best route, all the while constantly reminding himself to stay on the left side of the road. In fact, the entire week is so disorientating that he even forgets to be awkward around Jonathan and Miriam, though that might also be because he’s hardly ever in in the evenings, choosing instead to cycle around London until eleven and then cook a massive batch of chili to eat as soon as he gets in.

He does, at least, leave Jonathan and Miriam a note saying they can help themselves to as much as they like.

It does mean that he’s pretty wiped by the time Saturday rolls around, but that’s neatly solved by several cups of coffee and the fact that the British Museum is  _fucking incredible_. At least on par with the Smithsonian. They even have a platypus, which Clint decides is the benchmark for a good museum. They also have the fucking  _Rosetta Stone_  (he buys a magnet of it for Natasha because  _hello_  most famous translation in history), a clock built to look like a galleon and  _which actually fires cannons_ , a bunch of really cool mummies, and a  _mermaid_ , which is hilarious. According to Peggy it’s a fish stuck to a monkey which was a very popular practice in Victorian times, but mostly Clint thinks it’s the creepiest thing he’s ever seen so once they settled in the café, he wrestles with the museum wifi so he can WhatsApp photos of it to _everyone_.

Em replies immediately with  _[The fuck is that Barton]_

Bucky sends back a photo of him pulling a wildly over exaggerated horrified expression which makes Clint snort hard enough for Peggy to asks what’s up. When Clint shows her the photo, she raises one single perfect eyebrow.

“He looks like an idiot,” she says decisively.

“A hot idiot,” Angi adds, peering over Peggy’s shoulder. Which, to be fair, Clint can’t refute.

But the best reply comes from Thor who sends a video, clearly taken from his iPad rather than his phone. It’s short, the video, and comprises entirely of him handing his phone to Jane and Jane shrieking and dropping it on the floor while Thor laughs loudly in the background.

 

[Why the hell does the bank charge me for taking money out here?] Clint WhatsApps Kate a couple of days later, because _fuck_ is that getting annoying. He knows he won’t get a reply yet because it’s something like five in the morning in Willowdale, but he _really wants to know_.

The reply comes during his morning shift at St Tom’s (he’s been reliably informed that no one calls it anything but St Tom’s) where he’s been running around with Abdul doing the basic grunt work you’re tasked with as a foreign trainee doctor. He’s not fucking up too badly, which is good.

_[Because you’re using a US bank account. It charges you for currency conversion. Take out large sums and pay in cash.]_

Kate is such a useful friend.

[That’s fucking stupid.] he sends back.

The reply comes almost immediately, and Clint can imagine Kate at their kitchen table, drinking coffee and rolling her eyes. The resulting pang of homesickness _hurts_.

_[That’s how international finance works, dumbass. Suck it up.]_ and then, immediately following that: _[You do realise you can ask Jess this too, right?]_

To be honest, Clint hadn’t even thought to ask Jess. Kate knows all this sort of stuff, after all.

He takes her advice later that evening when Abdul invites him to the pub after work – a sort of weird thing to do as neither he nor Abdul drink, but apparently going to the pub after work is A Thing here and, anyway, Abdul’s a fun guy to hang out with.

He’s not what Clint expected at all, when he saw his on-the-ward guide would be Abdul Haqq Walid, though to be fair Clint wasn’t really sure _what_ he was expecting. It turns out that Abdul is only a few years older than Clint, has that sort of quiet confidence that Clint would kill for, and is fucking _Scottish,_ which throws Clint almost immediately. On top of that he’s funny, personable, and endlessly patient with all of Clint’s questions and queries, which makes a nice counterpoint to his hospital-liaison-slash-fake-Bruce, one Doctor Kinross, who is unsmiling and brusque and honestly Clint spends as little time talking to her as possible.

But Abdul still jokes about the insurance thing, because he’s also a _terrible person._

 

“What time is it where you are?” Natasha asks one night when they’re Skyping.

For the past two weeks or so, Clint has taken to Skyping Natasha and Kate after he gets in. As he gets in sometime around midnight, because he’s still unashamedly avoiding spending too much time with Jess’ parents, he’s normally still up by two in the morning. It’s not the smartest thing he could be doing, but he finds it awkward enough bumping into Jonathan and Miriam in the morning before work; he doesn’t need to add to that. Plus, no one has noticed yet, so it’s fine.

“Like,” Clint looks down at his UK phone – and wow does having two phones make him feel like a drug dealer – “coming up to two in the morning?”

Okay, so maybe the awkwardness with Jess’ parents is all from his side and maybe it would lessen if he _actually spent time with them_ , but Clint honestly can’t deal with the idea of it. He’s too tired and too stressed and has too many better things to do, like go to the pub with Abdul, go to museums with Peggy, and go to markets with Jess.

“Clint.” Natasha frowns at him through the tiny phone screen. “You really should go to bed.”

Maybe not doing this would also fix the tiredness problems, but eh. He can cope.

Clint shrugs. “It’s fine. I’d rather talk to you anyway.”

“When do you have to get up? At six?”

Clint doesn’t answer, which Natasha knows is a ‘yes’. She sighs. “I’m out tomorrow night and Friday. Yelena is having a birthday party for… oh, someone, I can’t remember, and I was invited along. And then the Language Department is having a fundraiser and I’ve been asked to introduce the guest speaker.”

“That great,” Clint says, sitting up a little higher on his bed to make sure Natasha gets the full force of his smile. “Congrats!”

Natasha shrugs, though a small smile graces her face. “It’s nothing fancy.”

“Yeah, but still, they picked you. Ivan the Terrible must be pretty pissed.”

Natasha’s smile widens at that. “Just a little, yes,” she says, but then her smile slips.

“What?”

“Well.” Her eyes cut away and she starts fiddling with the covers on her bed, which immediately makes Clint want to punch Ivan for whatever terrible thing he’s more-than-likely come out with this time. “He did make some rather vocal comments about sex appeal and aiming for the lowest common denominator.”

“That’s because,” Clint says, as evenly as he can manage, “he’s a misogynistic fuckwit without the good sense God gave a flea.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow at that.

“My mum used to say that,” Clint admits.

“Even the fuckwit part?”

“Okay, no. Not the fuckwit part. At least, not out loud.”

She laughs slightly at that and then frowns when Clint can’t help but yawn.

“Okay,” she says decisively, “I’m going to go so you’ll go to bed.”

Clint only manages to get halfway through a protest before Natasha cuts him off. “No, you need to _sleep_. And if you ring me again at this time on a weeknight, I’m not going to pick up.”

Clint gives her an over-exaggerated injured expression, all huge eyes and downturned mouth.

“Okay,” she says, sounding equal parts longsuffering and indulgent, “I’ll pick up, but I’ll be pissed.”

Well, Clint can live with that. She waits until he nods before smiling slightly. “Goodnight, Clint. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

He stares at the blank screen a little too long after Natasha hangs up, before moving into the bathroom to get ready for bed.

 

Natasha's admonishment only works for a couple of days before Clint’s discomfort around Jess’ parents once more takes centre stage. He’d never thought it would affect him like this. Clint hasn’t lived with adults like this since he was fourteen – Kate’s dad absolutely doesn’t count – and the whole time he did it was in a constant state of tension, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Jess’ parents have been nothing but kind to him, but he can’t shake that deeply ingrained walking-on-eggshells feeling and it’s _exhausting_ to maintain; carrying tension in his shoulders and neck like he’s one step away from ducking under tables to hide. He can’t hack it. So, despite promises to Natasha, he ends up changing absolutely nothing, spending as much time as possible away from the house and crashing into bed around one or two in the morning, only to wake up five or so hours later to do the whole routine all over again.

He gets used to it eventually. His ability to push through is one of the few good things he gained from his shit-show childhood. Sure, he’s tired, but he was tired in Willowdale too so that’s not that special. And sure, he has this niggling feeling that he’s forgetting something, but it’s not hospital related so he’s not worried. He’s making the most of being in London, just like Natasha and Kate and Bruce told him to. It’s _fine_. And if he starts to feel it, while Skyping Kate and Natasha (who does pick up and who is often at least marginally irritated that he’s not being sensible) or in the mornings, as the coffees get stronger and stronger, well, that’s fine too.

Clint’s good at denial. Unfortunately though, he realises too late that he’s far too used to relying on _someone else_ stopping him before everything gets out of hand.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [hope for you yet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9068590) by [kiss_me_cassie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiss_me_cassie/pseuds/kiss_me_cassie)




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